The Price of a Dream
by OneLoneWolf56
Summary: Amy Fleming is in the middle of her first European tour for the World Equestrian Games in Europe. She has broken her engagement to Ty Borden and now the two of them may have to learn to carry on with their lives separated by one too many broken promises as they search to find a way to recapture a dream which is slipping away.
1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

RATED 'M' FOR MATURE READERS ONLY!

This story will be rated "M" because it will be FOR MATURE READERS ONLY! There will be some violence, language, and sexual content. As dramatic as that sounds, that basically describes any weeknight of prime time television, only with the necessity of using words to convey the plot instead of pictures.

If the reader cannot cope with a truer to life representation of the characters described in a more dramatic fictional format, such as having to suffer much less than positive repercussions for the consequences of their actions, then I would suggest that it may be best to move on and not even start this story.

This will NOT be the typical Heartland argue, kiss, and make up kind of fluffy fairytale, rather it is going to be told from a much more realistic and definitely darker perspective which may not always put the characters in warm fuzzy places with the assurance of a happy ever after. Nothing is guaranteed, so the characters will have to deal with whatever is dealt to them.

I welcome reviews, pro or con, but if you must rant at me for not telling the story YOUR way, then I can only suggest you publish your own version! If you find this story makes you too uncomfortable to tolerate it, I have an instant cure for that, use your mouse or keypad and click it away! Problem solved!

I do not own any part of the characters or content of the CBC Heartland Television Series and I do not make any kind of profit from them.

That being said, enter into chapter one at your own risk!

We begin the story during the middle of Amy Fleming's European tour for the World Equestrian Games in Europe, set sometime between seasons seven and eight of the Heartland TV series. She has broken her engagement to Ty Borden and now the two of them may have to learn to carry on with their new lives, separated by one too many broken promises.

OneLoneWolf56

Chapter 1

The days had become unbearably drawn out for Ty Borden. He muddled through most days by going through the motions of finishing his classes at the University of Calgary or at his job at the Hudson Veterinary Clinic thinking it had to be later than the time indicated on his watch. Even worse was the dread of six o'clock and time to enter the void waiting for him at the sparingly decorated house he had just rented. The walls were still bare and a strange echo reverberated when anyone spoke in the house, but it didn't matter because there was no one to talk to except for two coed neighbors and their friends when they came to borrow this or that or ask for help with something that needed fixing.

Going home alone to unfamiliar surroundings in the modest little house on a big city side street was not the kind of feeling he would ever look forward to, but staying at his little trailer out in the country near Heartland Ranch was no longer an option.

Ty had been near to giving up all hope of ever achieving his perception of normality before his arrival at Heartland as a teenager, sent there to finish his probation period until it ended with his eighteenth birthday, but a blue-eyed little horsey girl had knocked his senses for a loop and brought him back into the game of life. She motivated the almost seventeen year old ward of the juvenile system to try to be a part of something good instead of being in the middle of one kind of trouble or another. The beautiful golden haired free-spirit of a girl had changed his way of thinking, totally transformed his sense of self-worth, and because of her he had learned to be more attentive to others' wishes and needs instead of playing the part of the self-serving jerk he had mastered by the time he was thirteen.

The portentous nearness of that horsey girl, Amy Fleming, his ex-partner in the train wreck that used to be his engagement, suffocated his existence to the point of having thoughts he never believed he could personally experience. Did he only imagine it, or had she said that _he_ was the one who made her happy enough to spend the rest of her life with him? Ty was tired, not only from the lack of sleep, but hopelessness had a way of chewing its way through every ounce of energy his body had in it. He could not get past the present to begin thinking about the future. How could he even pretend that the cared?

This rainy Sunday morning had been a waste of time. It was stormy outside and his plans to take a ride through the foothills on his Norton went down the drain with the torrent coming from the darkened sky. The motorcycle had been his lifeline, one last thread tying him to anything in life that gave him any real pleasure, hanging on through the weeks of nothingness to ride and revive his disposition to queue up another Monday morning and push through it. Ty thought if anything could soothe his mind enough to make it give up and rest after another sleepless night, the steady drumming of rain on the roof would do it, but he just laid there, and the more he tried to capture sleep, the farther it eluded him.

One particularly excruciating stormy evening alone with those shattered memories in the compact little trailer he had rented from a cowboy friend of his had nearly sent him over the edge. He tried in vain to navigate his thoughts away from the endless loop of images that played over and over of Amy being waited on hand and foot by royal servants in that fairytale palace, basking in the glow of never ending gifts and attention from Ahmed al Saeed, the prince of some nameless country on the other side of the world who had managed to wedge himself between the couple and tear them apart at a strained time in their relationship. He imagined the prince having already installed a new golden throne sitting beside his own in that goddamn kingdom of his, where ever it was, to show off his new princess to the world. Muscles in his gut stayed tied up in knots from the out-and-out devastation he felt when he perceived them alone together, entwined in the throes of royal passion, the son of a bitch haven taken his place in giving her the pleasure that she had only shared with him. Had every kiss, every promise, every hope he shared with the woman that had agreed to marry him been a lie? How could he have misread the messages she had sent him with her entrancing blue eyes when she looked at him the way she did when they were alone? How could he have felt the tenderness in her touch if it wasn't really there? What the hell was he going to do with the rest of his life now that the road to his future had been plowed under?

That night was merciless to every will that he tried to summon to make him want to go on. He was saved only at the last possible second by a God-sent lightning strike as it tore its way through the tall Aspen only feet away from the converted travel trailer, its impact jarring him back from giving away his very existence. The jolt affected him so much that he knew extreme changes were necessary for him to maintain any semblance of sanity, and one of the changes would be to remove himself far away from anything that reminded him of her.

Two weeks had not diminished the sting of Amy's absolute rejection during his disastrous trip to Europe. He had gone there to reconnect with his fiancée after she had been on tour for two months with the prince's jumping team during trials leading up to the European Equestrian Games and had seemed to be growing distant in her phone conversations with him. Her mysterious new attitude had been worse than any nightmare he could have imagined and the weight of their sunken relationship weighed him down like an anvil tied around his neck. He didn't see it coming, and it left him at the end of a dream that had once defined the next stage of his life.

Ty lay there exhausted and alone in that dreary, bare little bedroom surrounded by only the failures that were trying to destroy him, and he knew that needed another miracle to save him.

* * *

Amy Fleming stood in the center of the D'Ornano Stadium's arena, located in the city of Caen, France, watching one of the riders from the royal equestrian team make another run at a series of medium jumps she had set up hoping to help the exasperated rider with the timing of his strides, something he had been lacking in the last two competitions. "Keep your heels out of his sides! He is confused with what you are asking him to do when he feels that!" the aggravated trainer shouted. She caught the unappreciative glance he gave her as he circled around again, and when the stallions hoof nicked the next pole and knocked it to the ground, "Ohhh-Kaaay, Anwar, why don't we call it a day! I think we all need a break!"

After jerking the horses' reins a bit too harshly, she thought, the well-groomed rider cut across the course and the pair disappeared through a gate that led to the lavish stables lining both sides of a stone lane that separated rows of individual stalls. " _Gonna have to see about calming that jerk down before his horse refuses to even let him in the saddle_!" she mumbled to herself as she walked across the soft dirt to exit the arena.

"Amy! Come! This way!" The stressed head-trainer looked up to see Ahmed motioning her through the smaller gate at the middle-front of the ring with a hyper wave from his right hand, the gate held wide with his left.

"It does not look as though Anwar has made any progress today. I was hoping to see some improvement, but it appears there is more work to do!"

"Yes, Ahmed, the session could have definitely gone better," she said. "I am going to have to find a way to get through to him soon, or it will take longer to fix Izzat's willingness to cooperate with him than we have available to us."

"Keep me posted, please," Ahmed said as he pursed his lips and evaluated his options. "I have a proposition! I am prepared to organize a team retreat to my villa outside of Paris. Perhaps a weekend away from the pressure of work will help the morale of everyone, including you! I have noticed that you are not yourself, Amy. Is there anything that I can do?" he offered.

"No, Ahmed, it's just that, I have been out of sorts since Ty went back to Canada."

The prince raised a brow, suddenly curious, and he asked, "Is everything alright, Amy? It's been two weeks and it seems that you are disturbed by what has happened. You only need to tell me whatever it is that you need, and I will make it happen!" he offered, showing off his million dollar smile.

Amy's shoulders dropped with the confession, having had no other confidant to share her emotional baggage with, and she sighed, "We had a serious argument, just before he left, and, I ended our engagement," she sulked, maintaining her focus on trying to push the memory of Ty's face out of her mind from when she made the snap decision to take her ring off her finger and slap it in his hand. "We didn't part on good terms, and I regret that things ended the way they did. I know now that I really hurt him this time. Even if we can't work it out, he didn't deserve what I said to him. I've tried to call to at least say I was sorry for the way it all happened, but he hasn't answered any of my calls since that day, so, I guess what is done, is done."

"It is for the best, Amy!" he perked up at the news. "Things have changed very dramatically in your life! You should never have been tied down in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere with a stable hand as a husband!" he prodded, always keen with any opportunity to put her ex-fiancé in a demeaning light.

"Ahmed! That's not fair!" she snapped at her ex's defense. "Ty had a tragic childhood. His parents treated him terribly and put him in more hardships than any child should ever have to endure! He is a good man, with a kind heart, and he has managed his way through school and done well at it, _without any help from anyone_ , and I know that he will be a successful veterinarian someday!"

"Amy, he could have never provided you with the life that you deserve, and will now surely achieve! Do you see yourself as the wife of a veterinarian, in a place like, _that_ , having babies and scratching your way through life, working for nothing? You should be thinking of the opportunities that have presented themselves to you since you came to Europe with me! You have only seen a small portion of what is ahead, I promise you!"

The exchange had riled the true cowgirl at heart, still loyal to the ways of her previous life back in Alberta, but she had learned to bite her tongue and behave as a leader of an internationally competitive team of the highest caliber, constantly under the scrutiny of a worldwide press, although the fiery temper of a rancher's daughter was still hard to manage at times.

"Maybe not anymore," she ruminated.

Ahmed placed his hand on her shoulder to show support to his obviously torn head trainer, "Think about it! You will see! It is for the best!" as she turned away and walked to the exit.

The limousine was parked in its usual place in front of the stadium and she greeted the driver as he nodded and opened the door for her to climb in the back seat. She usually did her paperwork on the way to the hotel, or made calls to her team's staff to give directions, or to ask questions about any of the horses she might have concerns for, but today she sat and looked out the window absent mindedly watching the nameless people and landmarks as she passed by, blurring her distinction between her past and her future.

She had managed to stay busy enough with her job that when she finally made it back to her room each evening she was content with a long, hot shower and having a five star meal in her silk pajamas and studying her notes before crashing into bed for a much needed rest. There was no time to concern herself with her new status as a single woman away from home or to harbor any regrets over her extinct relationship. The only thing that mattered to her now was to focus on the team's problems and employ the solutions to fix them. Winning four pre-games meets in a row was satisfying enough, for now, justifying her reasons for moving here and starting the career she only dreamed of as a girl. This job would place her as one of the most sought after female trainers in the world, if the team was successful in the games, and she had every intention of making sure that is exactly how it was going to happen.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Lou Fleming was hurrying her youngest daughter to finish with her late breakfast. The four year old was testing her by dallying with her oatmeal, sloshing her spoon around and embellishing her protest for not getting to ride her miniature pony, Pogie, because of a tantrum she had exhibited in Lou's diner in town the day before. The determined mother threatened to take up the child's bowl if she wasn't going to finish it, and just as Katie was about to embark on another battle of the wills with her mother the phone vibrated in Lou's pocket. She nearly jumped out of her shoes when Amy's number was presented across the screen. "Amy! My God! Where have you been? I mean, I know where you've been, but, what has taken you so long to call? Why haven't you been answering my messages?"

"Whoa! Lou! Take it easy! It's just that I've been really busy! It takes an unbelievable amount of work to take care of an operation this size, especially when the horses, and the people, are not all that willing to listen to a commoner like me tell them what to do.

"Kinda rough, is it?" the older sister asked.

"Yeah, sometimes, definitely!" Amy retorted. "There is no shortage of attitude, that's for sure! So, how are things going back home on the ranch?" she wondered.

"Some days are better than others, like always. It has been pretty hectic around here at the dude ranch and at Maggie's, too. And the girls, let me tell you! Your youngest niece is testing my patience right now! And, watching after Georgie, phew, just as stubborn as ever! She has been doing OK with the boarding horses, but you know how antsy she gets when she wants to go riding or doing other fun stuff!"

"Boarding horses?" Amy asked.

"Yeah, she thought it would be really cool to take care of client's horses like her Aunt Amy did, so we took in a couple for her to try it, but the reality of the extra responsibility set in, that it isn't always a fun job, and that it has to be done no matter what she wants to do instead. But, I have to hand it to her, she has managed to keep them clean, watered, fed, and exercised."

Amy smiled into the phone, but it wasn't lost on her that her sister had just referred to her in the past tense. "How's my boy?"

"Spartan? Oh, he misses you, of course, but he is one of Georgie's perks. She gets to ride him at least twice a week, just like Phoenix, so those two are not standing around getting fat," she laughed.

"What other horses have you got there?" Amy asked.

"Just a couple of client's horses staying here while their owners are on vacation. Oh, and, Harley, of course! Why?"

"Just curious," she asked, checking to see if Ty was comfortable with leaving his horse there after their falling out.

"So, are you enjoying France?" Lou wondered, wishing she could have the luxury of seeing Europe on someone else's expense account, and getting paid while she did it.

"Lou! It is so beautiful here! There is so much history and architecture, and art museums, and the food, Oh, My, God, Lou, the food is amazing!"

"Who are you and what have you done with my sister?" Lou laughed, taken aback with the chatter she was hearing.

"I know, right? It's just that I never even thought about things like this before! There is so much out there that I knew nothing about before and I am so amazed by what I've been able to see, and I love it!" the younger woman exclaimed.

The talk went enthusiastically for another five minutes with swapping questions and answers about different members of the family. Lou was pleased that the conversation was moving along as well as it was, considering Amy's apparent lack of interest until now, but wondered why she still had not even mentioned her breakup with Ty, or even as much as asked about him. She was forming up a scenario, however, the one she warned her sister about for the second time on the day she left for her trip.

"So, Amy, I suppose I can stop planning for a wedding?" she baited the question with no way of avoiding some sort of explanation, she hoped.

"Yeah, about that. No, there is not going to be a wedding, at least any time soon," she admitted. "Things got a little too, uh, too complicated," she said, searching for a smooth segue.

"Complicated? How complicated could it get?"

"You wouldn't understand, Lou! It's just, he came over here and acted completely inappropriately in front of my co-workers, and my _employer_ , and I couldn't have that! I was totally embarrassed by him!"

"Ty embarrassed you? How?" she asked in disbelief.

"He just showed up and expected me to drop everything, just because he was here, and it made a _mess_ of my schedule. Everybody is watching me, Lou! I cannot be distracted by anything! My career depends on it! What else was I supposed to do?"

Lou pondered what she had just heard, her mouth gaping in dismay at how unfeeling her own sister came across about the man she used to believe was the love of her life, and prodded, "Let me understand this, you were embarrassed by Ty traveling all the way across Canada, the Atlantic Ocean, and half of Europe to see you, at considerable time and expense that he can ill afford right now, and he made you angry enough to give him back his ring?"

"You see! That's why I haven't called! I knew you wouldn't understand!"

"Oh, I think I understand, alright! The museums, beautiful scenery, fine food, they wouldn't have anything to do with Ahmed, would they? Amy! I warned you!"

'Click'

Lou gasped aloud as she pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it like it still had some explaining to do, but she knew for sure that her little sister was tipping her toe into a pool of trouble that she had no clue about, having had little experience with the outside world, and still much too naïve to handle the decisions she was flirting with.

"My God, what must Ty be thinking?" She shuddered, wishing for there to be a possible way to repair the relationship, but she surrendered the idea and conceded that too much damage may have been done this time. ' _She must have crushed him, if she did what it sounds like she did. I need to find him, now_!'

She scooped up Katie's half eaten breakfast and put the bowl in the sink, held out her hand and said, "OK, Katie, let's go see if we can find your big sister so you can help her with the horses, how's that sound?" knowing it would be a sure fire way to get the headstrong little girl to go along with her plan without any flak.

"Yay!" Katie cheered and went dashing to sit on the bench by the door to put on her barn boots, pleased with her apparent victory in the crusade to end the punishment over her attitude.

Lou towed her daughter smartly across the driveway to the barn and when they made it to the entrance she called for her fourteen year old daughter, "Georgie! Can you come here, please?"

"Geez, Lou, where's the fire?" startled by the racket from the last stall in the aisle, using one of adoptive great grandfather's favorite quips.

"I need you to watch Katie for about an hour or so, OK?"

"What's the big rush?"

"Never mind that! I need for you take her for me?"

"Sure. "C'mon Katie, you can give Spartan and Phoenix a carrot for me, OK? And don't forget about Harley! He needs one too!"

The little girl ran to the feed bins and Georgie gave Lou her 'whatever' look as she showed her eager little helper how to raise the lid on the bucket full of horse treats.

"Watch her!" Lou pointed and reminded the older girl.

"Don't worry! I got it!" she came back.

Lou hurried back to the house and rummaged around in the refrigerator looking for some leftovers that she could warm up quickly. ' _He probably hasn't been eating right!'_ she thought _, 'That should cover my excuse for a visit!'_ After the microwave's bell chimed she wrapped the plate in tin foil and looked for the keys to her grandfather's old Chevy truck.

* * *

Dust blustered behind the old truck as Lou cleared the entrance to the ranch under the 'Heartland' sign that hung over the gate. She took a deep breath and tried to think of what she should say to him when she showed up unannounced. The worked-up driver caught a glimpse of the mail box out of the corner of her eye and it triggered an alert that Ty could be in more trouble than she thought. A seemingly unimportant trip to the mailbox the day before could have been a possible omen that chilled her as the implications sank in. She reached for her phone and punched in the number of Ty's clinic. "Scott! This is Lou! Did Ty come to work today?" her voice shook as she asked.

"Hey, Lou! Is everything alright?" he asked, detecting her urgency.

She repeated more forcefully, "Did Ty come to work today?"

"No, Lou, he called in sick again yesterday afternoon. Why? You sound like something is wrong!"

Her heart beat a little faster, unsure if she was being rational, but a haunting urgency overtook her and it made her somehow feel that something was very wrong.

"I don't know anything yet, Scott, but I just talked to Amy a while ago and after the way she sounded on the phone I just had this awful feeling that I should find him as fast as I can!" She swallowed to moisten her dry throat and shared her fears with her longtime friend, "Scott, he came by the ranch yesterday afternoon and dropped off a check. He put it in the mailbox without even coming to the house to see us! He wrote a note saying it was for taking care of Harley, and he thanked us for everything we have done for him, but I tore it up, of course! It just now occurred to me what it could have meant!" she started to sob into the phone and Scott picked up her concern.

"Ok, Lou, don't panic! We don't know anything yet! Wait a minute, where are you headed, to the trailer?"

"Yeah, I'm almost there!"

"He won't be there! He's moved to Calgary, down by the campus! Wait a second, here's the address!"

Lou slid the truck to a stop in the gravel road and reached into her purse for a pen and paper as the vet read the note that Ty had pinned to the board in the office.

"Maybe you should wait for me to meet you, Lou, you know, just in case…"

"Don't say it, Scott! I'm probably being totally crazy for thinking like this, but Amy really shook me up with how much she has seemed to change since she got to France. If she behaved toward him like I think she did he wouldn't have taken it well at all! Ok, I'm already turned around and headed that way, and you don't need to leave the clinic, yet, but I will call you if I need you, OK?"

"God, Lou, call me back when you find out that he is OK?" his mentor and longtime friend pleaded, angry with himself that he hadn't taken the time to notice anything more than his new partner moping around like he always did when he and Amy were fighting.

The remainder of the trip into Calgary only took an extra thirty minutes to drive, mostly because Lou pushed the speed limits to find the eight year younger man to whom she regarded as her little brother. She was thankful that the morning traffic had cleared somewhat and she was able to easily navigate the narrow streets to the address Scott had given her. As she inched down the side street full of houses rented by students at the university the old blue truck that used to be a fixture at the ranch came into view sitting in a driveway beside a white house with no sign of anyone being home.

"I'm here, I found it! My God, Scott," she said, gritting her teeth in anger, "If he has hurt himself, I will _never_ forgive her!" she vowed to her longtime friend. "I'll let you know!"

"Wait, Lou, don't hang up! Keep me on the line!"

The terrified woman forgot the plate she had prepared for Ty in the seat and she sprung out of the truck trying not to run full tilt to the front door. She rapped on the screen door a few times and heard no one stirring. She opened the outer door and rapped again on the more robust wooden door inside it. "No one is answering!" she told her anxious listener. Lou put her nose against the glass and shielded her eyes to see if she could make anything out in the dark room and her eyes broadened in a start when she thought she could see someone sitting still in the living room chair, her skin tingling with fear for the worst. "I see someone, but they're not moving!" Panic elevated her tone as she reported what she found. "They aren't moving, like they can't even hear me at the door!"

The unwavering woman grabbed the doorknob to see if it was unlocked, and it opened.

"Lou! Wait!" Scott knew that she was going in and didn't want her to be the one who found him if their fears were justified.

Lou ran to the unresponsive man and shrieked at the top of her lungs when she saw that it was him, "Ty!"


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Lou screamed hysterically as she ran to the man in the chair and shook him violently by the shoulders to try and revive him. Ty jumped awake and nearly fell to the floor at the uproar and as far as he had established in his disheveled stupor he was being attacked by a crazy woman who had broken into his house! "What the hell! Lou?" he shouted when he came to his senses and recognized the crazy woman as his being his ex-fiancée's sister.

She hadn't decided yet if she should kiss him or slap him silly, slouching and shitfaced drunk in the chair, "Do you have any goddam idea how worried we have been about you?" she castigated him again. "I thought you were dead!"

Ty struggled to get himself up to speed, gauging her level of being pissed off at its peak from her unusual cursing. "Worried? About me? Why? Other than the damn _heat attack_ you just gave me!"

A violent shiver coursed through her body when her hyper-tensed muscles uncoiled from the shock. "Don't you give me that shit, Ty Borden! Who do you think you are talking to, huh?" she emphasized by driving a rigid index finger at the tip of his nose.

Her attitude took another bounce toward panic when she noticed the pistol sitting on the end table beside his chair. She bent across him and jacked open the chamber to see if it was loaded, and it was.

"Shit! Ty! What is this? What are you doing with this?"

"Here we go again!" he mumbled to himself.

Lou snapped her hands head high in frustration to accentuate her point and commenced with her riot act, "What were you thinking! Why didn't you call us if you were having trouble! You know we love you! _All of us_! It would have destroyed our family if you had done this! _We are your_ _family_!" The frazzled woman burst into tears again, relief and terror still playing a tug of war with her emotions, and then she collapsed to her knees onto floor in front of the chair. She bawled and sniffled into his shirt as she laid her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around him in a bear like hug, and she burned from the inside out vowing that she could have wrung her sister's neck right then, if she could get ahold of her, wondering what had happened to the little horsey girl who loved her days at Heartland and feared she may have turned into someone she didn't even recognize.

Just then she remembered the phone in her coat pocket and took it out to see if she was still connected, "Scott?"

"Yeah, Lou, I heard. Is he OK?"

"He's in rough shape, but he's going to be alright, if I don't kill him myself for how terrified he made me!" she half smiled as the relief finally started to get the better of her terror.

"Do you need me to do anything?"

"No, I've got it. I just need to get him into the truck so I can take him home."

"Just say the word, Lou, anything you need, OK?"

"Thanks. I'll give you a call when we get him settled in."

Ty still hadn't said anything since she took the weapon, removed the clip, and put them in the back pockets of her jeans. "Come here, you are coming with me!" Lou pulled him sharply by his right arm and wrapped hers around his waist for support.

"Lou! Just leave me alone!" he demanded, slow and half-conscious as he attempted to twist loose from her grip.

"Do you really want to try and stop me? I am _so_ close to kicking your ass right now, but I'd rather wait until you are sober enough to appreciate a good old fashioned ass whooping!" She struggled to get them both through the door and as she resolutely walked him to the truck they were interrupted by a voice from behind.

"Hey! What's going on? Ty? Are you OK? A young blond haired girl inquired when she saw him being dragged away limp and staggering by a dark haired stranger that she noticed was too small to take him against his will, if he wasn't shitfaced, which he obviously was.

"Hey, Annie! This is Lou! She is a friend of mine, or, at least she was!"

"What are you doing with him? Where are you taking him, and why?" Ann demanded.

"Ty obviously needs a little help walking, and I am taking him home," the rescuer said matter of factly.

"Is that right, Ty? Is that what is going on here?"

"Yup! Lou, here, she is rescuing me, in case you couldn't tell, whether I like it or not! She usually gets what she wants, so, you'd better stand back or you might get rescued too!"

"Get in!" Lou demanded, pointing to the empty seat.

They drove off leaving the confused coed with a wave, standing on the grass between the sidewalk and the street, arms folded across her chest, and wondering what the hell had just happened.

With a couple of turns at the end of the block they were homeward bound. Ty sat motionless beside her with Lou keeping a wary eye on him while she drove. "We'll be home soon," she told the lethargic passenger. "We will get through this, Ty. You need to know that you are never going to be alone, because we are here for you, no matter what!"

Ty scoffed at her, "Home?" he repeated. "I can't be _there_ , how do you think I wound up like this in the first place?" She couldn't think of anything that would alter his take on the fact that he was going to 'Amy's house' for now, but she damn sure was _not_ going to let him out of her sight!

* * *

Lou had called her grandfather to come back to the ranch from Fairfield Stables, the beautiful horse ranch of his new wife, Lisa Stillman, who preferred to stay there because of the modern accommodations and privacy away from a growing family living at the ranch house. Ty had never had a connection with a strong father figure as a kid and the two of them had developed a mutual respect and love that went a long way in making up for the earlier years in his life. She knew that if anyone could get to Ty, it would be him.

"Lou, I've got a better idea, why don't you bring him here?" Jack offered with Lisa listening in, still not understanding what was happening.

"You know, that is a great idea!" she agreed. "We will be there in fifteen minutes, or so, if that's OK?"

"Just get him here!" Jack said, sickened to think that the young man who loved his granddaughter more than anything on this earth was this distraught over their separation, and that he hadn't been there to make sure he was handling the breakup well enough.

"What has happened?" Lisa asked, knowing the look on her husband's somber face meant something had gone terribly wrong.

"It's Ty. Lou found him in Calgary in his new place up there, and, well, she got there in time, is all I know, but he's in trouble and we need to help him!"

"Oh! Certainly! Maybe I can call one of my friends who is a doctor in Calgary to come out here and look him over, and if need be, then we will see what we need to do for him from there?"

"That would be great, Lis!" he agreed, shaking his head in self-imposed guilt as he leaned into her and placed a loving kiss on her forehead.

"It's not your fault, Jack. That boy loves you, you know that, and he will be fine once we get him here and figure this out. I'll make the call right now!"

When Lou stopped the truck in front of the sprawling white four thousand square foot house Jack was waiting in the driveway. He reached for the door and took note of Ty's deficiency of alertness, setting his hope backward that he might not be as bad as Lou had let on, given that she could get prematurely wound up on occasion.

"Hey, Ty, it's good to see ya!" the concerned older man greeted his young friend. He grabbed the wobbly, drunken man around his waist to steady him and when he tried to stand Jack could smell the alcohol on his breath. Oddly, he was relieved at Ty's being intoxicated because he knew he wasn't an alcoholic, at least not yet, and that should make it easier to find a solution for his recovery than if he would have suffered some kind of psychological meltdown. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he and his family had been through things like this before and he would make sure whatever needed doing got done! "C'mon, Bud, let's get you into the house and clean you up a little, then we can get some coffee and a little something to eat. Whaddya say?" he cheered him on with a slap on the shoulder, calmed that he wasn't any worse than this.

"For some reason, I've got this weird craving for lasagna, you wouldn't happen to have any of that around here would you?" he asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes I do!" Lou said as she reached into the seat to retrieve the plate that was still nestled in the middle, laughing at his reacting to the smell and regaining an appetite, apparently already on the mend.

By late afternoon Lou had gone home to see about her daughters and found them still out in the barn brushing Katie's horse Pogie and getting him ready to put back in this stall. "How did you two get along?"

"Fine!" Katie replied, grinning around the missing front tooth for which she had been well compensated recently by the tooth fairy. "Pogie really liked that I got to ride him today!"

"I'll bet he did!" the doting mother softened at the innocence of her excitement.

Lou walked over to her and bent to kiss the little one on the cheek, then went to Georgie and thanked her, "I owe ya one," and kissed her too.

"Yeah, you do!" smiling like she had a fist full of aces and she had just raised the bid.

* * *

After she sat her things on the counter beside the sink, Lou bumped into the counter and felt for the pistol in her pocket. Making sure no one saw her, Lou took down a ceramic chicken that had sat on its nest atop of the shelves displaying pictures and things her mother had put there when she was a kid and stashed the gun inside it. As far as she knew it hadn't been touched in years, so the pistol should be safe there. The clip would be better kept somewhere separate in case the weapon was discovered and would pose little threat to safety with no ammunition to discharge. She put it in her underwear drawer. Not even her husband Peter dared to look in there!

The busy day had unraveled her schedule and it would be time for dinner soon, so she began to prepare the meal for the girls and her grandfather. She planned to check in on Ty after Katie went to bed, and she shook her head with worry at everything that had happened since she had gotten up this morning.

* * *

Ty had recharged enough to be able to take a shower and change into some of Jack's jeans and a plaid shirt that Lisa had laid out for him in one of the guest rooms. He shuffled around in the medicine cabinet for shaving lotion and wrinkled his nose at the smell. ' _Must be some of that French stuff she gets for Jack! Makes a guy smell a little light in the loafers, if you ask me_!' he thought.

"Hey, Ty! My, don't you look, like a rancher!" Lisa choked back a laugh while trying to find the words to describe the mismatch in size and character of the garments to the man wearing them when he entered the kitchen.

"Yeah, that's me, alright! A rancher!" the young man pulled his lips together, tugging at the baggy material hanging from his waist, embarrassed by how he must look to everyone that knew his more contemporary style.

"Jack's out on the porch. He likes to get out of the house and watch the horses out in the pasture, if you would like to join him."

"Thank you Lisa. Thank you for looking out for me even when I'm being an ass," he apologized, humble and ashamed. "And I mean that!"

Lisa rose out of her chair and drew him into a hug. "I know you do!" She pushed away enough to look him in the eye and felt better when she did, because she could see that the young man she had watched grow up on her husband's ranch was still in there somewhere. "Sweetheart, I know you are hurting. Nobody blames you for feeling badly about how things turned out with Amy. Her decision affected all of us. But you must understand something, Ty. Jack thinks of you like a son. It _killed_ him to think that he didn't know things had gotten so bad for you. He misses you, and wants to help, so, please, don't fight him too hard when he tries, OK?"

He nodded and took the hot cup of coffee she had waiting for him and asked, "Can you handle two? He is probably ready for another cup. Oh, by the way, it's decaf, so it won't keep you two from sleeping tonight."

Ty toed the screen door and handed the second steaming cup to Jack. The older man motioned with a nod for him to sit in the opposite rocking chair and said, "Helluva day!"

"Yeah, that would be an understatement! Have you heard from Lou? I wonder if she's still upset? I owe her an apology too. There will have to be a lot of those going around as soon as I get the chance."

"I don't believe Lou was ever mad at you, Ty. You just scared the bejeezus out of her! She loves you, you know. She told me once that you were the little brother she never had, and I believe she really feels that way. I know I think of you as though you were my son. We are all proud of you, you know, for the way you took advantage of your situation and got back into school, all on your own, and got that diploma. That was no small thing! Scott thinks as highly of you as the rest of us. He is glad you wanted to stay and be a partner at his clinic. There's a _good_ future for you there, Ty." Jack situated himself forward in his chair and looked his young friend in the eye, "Don't throw it all away now just because of a setback in your love life! Shit happens, and then, you get over it! You can't let this thing with Amy take you down! Nobody knows better than me how much you loved her. I saw the whole thing grow into what you had day by day for years. I don't know what the hell she is thinking right now, she hasn't offered any explanation to me or Lou either, but you have your own life to figure out. It is yours to make into something you are happy with. Giving up is just not an acceptable solution, Ty. You are hurting now, but it will pass and there are some great days ahead for you, so, get your shit together and take the bull by the horns!"

Ty watched the cracks between the boards in the deck, taking in his friend's advice and knowing he was telling him the truth. "I know you are right, Jack, but I stopped being only _me_ a long time ago. I haven't thought of anything since we got engaged as just me, not my career as a vet, or as a business partner, or even as a human being without Amy being a part of it. She was as much a part of who I am as me! And now, half of me is gone, the half that believed in anything. I don't know if I will ever get the other half back, you know, because once you've given your heart away, for real, it's not just yours anymore!"

Jack knew he was running out of ammunition and would need help soon if he was going to bolster his case against giving up, although he could tell that Ty was only badly bruised and not yet broken. "Lisa has a friend she has known since grade school. She used to come here to Fairfield to ride with her on the weekends when Lisa's family still lived in the city. She has offered to talk to you, Ty, off the books, so there will be no record of it anywhere. You don't have to think about some report showing up on your record later in life, you know, just in case you want to run for public office or something like that," he chuckled at the thought and smiled, "which would be about the only thing you could do to really piss me off!"

The remark made Ty laugh and he looked up, waiting for what was next.

"Would you consider talking to her, if she came out here to the stables tomorrow? You might have to take her along on a trail ride to cover her fee, though, if you think you can handle it?"

Ty was surprised to even think of himself getting asked those dreaded touchy-feely questions by a stranger again. He had tested the mettle of many of the province's therapists from the juvy system as a kid, but if she was a friend of Lisa's, she was a friend of his, and he nodded that he would.

Lou arrived just as the sun reached the Rockies and as she parked Jack's truck in the driveway Ty asked, "Do you suppose she has come to deliver on her promise?"

"What promise is that?"

"The one she made this afternoon to kick my ass when I was sober enough to appreciate it!"

Jack cracked up, the first good laugh he had enjoyed in longer that he could remember, and he said, "Well, if she was wearin' her jeans I would probably tell you to head out and get the biggest head start you could get, but judging from the goodies she has brought you, I'd say you are probably OK!"

The apprehensive young man looked her over just to make sure he didn't need to duck when she approached his chair, but when she saw what he was wearing she snorted, laughing hysterically and trying to talk between outbursts of cackling, "You look like twins!" which made even Ty loose his sadness.

After they had worn themselves down enough to speak, Lou said, "I brought you some stuff from Maggie's. There's the special that you like and a couple of pies that should do you for a while!"

When she saw the smile that only Ty could give, a burden was lifted from her and she knew he was better already. She sat the things she had brought him on the porch, winked at her grandpa, and wrapped her arms around him tightly and lingered in her newfound gladness as she hugged his neck.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Loud music rocked the stone terrace at the lower end of the huge flower garden. It was the centerpiece of Ahmed's two hundred acre French villa which had been landscaped by some of the finest architects in Europe. A rocky branch meandered into pools of lily pads and reeds filled with an impressive stock of unique pond fish presenting every color under the rainbow as they weaved lazily through the foliage.

About one hundred of Ahmed's friends and team members were enjoying the fully stocked open bar, dancing and making the most of a long weekend away from work as guests of the prince, and they were glad to be away from the tremendous pressure they were under to perform at the top of their game. The mansion and guest villas were ample to give them an exceptional temporary residence that surpassed the finest hotels they had been living out of for months, manned by an attentive staff which made certain that every guest's requests were promptly attended to.

Amy laughed at one of her teammates who was sharing an animated tale about his most embarrassing moment as a rider, an incident where his saddle came loose as he built up speed approaching the first obstacle and left the ten year jumper riding the saddle into a poof of boiling dust as his horse chose to run the course without him.

The Canadian head trainer appreciated the way the Arabian based team had made a special effort to help her feel welcome tonight, a pleasant surprise for the better since she had gotten a tip from one of her female staff that some of the team were gossiping that she had landed the job at the demands of the prince for less than professional reasons. She had something to prove to her doubters and she would not accept failure after the personal sacrifices she had taken to get here.

There were five couples standing around a fire pit having snacks from the platter of fresh meats, fruits, and dips to suit every taste, and the servers circulated among them giving access to any beverage they desired. Amy had developed a taste for champagne and had already sipped two glasses full, just enough to give the inexperienced drinker a head start at a buzz to help her relax.

The sole light haired woman watched a blaze whip through the kindling after one of the staff had just tossed a stack into the pit. Her mind flashed back to the little trailer near her grandfather's ranch in a rare spell of being homesick. She once spent every spare minute with her fiancé under the star filled sky sitting beside the fire pit built with stones from his property. They dreamed about the life they would share as partners and wondered where the journey would take them. Her skin tingled at the memory and she crossed her arms to warm them as a trace of loneliness crept in. This was the first time since she had gotten to Europe that she had taken the time to realize how far away her family was at this instant and wondered if they ever thought about her anymore. She could not remember the last time her mind had taken her anywhere near her old stomping grounds of Alberta and the vision almost cost her the buzz she had been nourishing. A lively tune from the band woke up the crowd and the couples which were standing with her whooped to the change of tempo and strutted away with the beat.

Ahmed had been keeping a watchful eye on his head trainer and noticed her standing alone from the balcony and worked his way through the crowd of partiers to meet her. "Amy! I hope you are enjoying yourself!" he said, smiling as he swept away another glass of bubbly from a passing tray and handed it to her. She took the long stemmed crystal, disproportionately full of his finest, and said, "Thank you! Yes, I am having a wonderful time! Your place, it's amazing!" she gushed and anxiously paused to take another sip.

"Come! I have something I want you to see!" he offered, leading her by the back of her arm down a path arched over the top with roses.

"Oh, this is absolutely gorgeous!" she said in awe of the engulfing colors that surrounded them. "And the smell, this is unbelievable!"

"Yes, I enjoy it as well! But there is something special that is just over the hill that will truly amaze you!"

"Oh, really? What is so special about it?" she laughed at his enthusiasm.

"You will just have to wait and see!" he teased her and flashed his soothing smile which always made Amy feel at ease when he used it.

The couple reached the top of a small hill and the path made an abrupt right turn transitioning into a long run of stone steps curving in and out of the steep terrain on the other side. She could hear the rush of water in the distance and wondered what it could be. "Is that it? Is it a waterfall?" she nudged his ribs with an elbow.

Ahmed played dumb, "I cannot describe it adequately. It is something you will have to see for yourself to believe it!"

Another five minutes had them turning a sharp curve which ran through a large stone wall with a natural tunnel. The light from the other end glowed, somehow illuminated out here in the woods, hidden by another turn that muffled the roar of water on the other side. Ahmed took her by the hand inside the tunnel and said, "Hold on, Amy, this part is a bit difficult!"

When they exited the narrow passage the formation opened up into a large cave and a wide, clear waterfall poured steady and fast over the opening on the far side, effectively making a flowing wall backlit by the full moon from above. Amy's mouth gaped in awe at the surprise. "Oh, Ahmed! I can't believe this place! I have never seen anything like it! It's almost like it can't be real!"

"I don't think there _is_ another place like it! I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it, Amy, just like I did when I first saw you!"

She whipped around to catch his expression to confirm what she thought he had said, and her lips parted in surprise, a mixture of dread for the complications a romance with her boss might entail and of the excitement she felt in this magical place alone with a real life prince who had just told her that he loved her.

"Ahmed, I don't think this is a good idea! Your staff already has their suspicions as to why I am here in the first place, and letting something like this get out will only make it worse!"

"You need only to let me worry about them, Amy! None of them will say a word, or I will have them removed from my team before the end of the day!"

"But, Ahmed! This is…,"

He leaned in and kissed her deeply, and when she didn't resist, he pulled her closer and slipped his tongue between her lips, flicking the tip of it against hers, causing a catch in her breath as the sensation was attacking her senses from all sides.

"Ahmed, no," she said weakly as she scuffled one step backward, her knees threatening to buckle from the rush of passion and the effects of his expensive wine, but he spun her around and pushed her against a smooth boulder at the rear of the cave and gently braced her against it as he moved closer.

"You make me feel like no other woman I have ever known! You tell me things that all the others are afraid to say! I want you to be in my life, Amy, not just as my head trainer, but as much more than that! I will take care of you, Amy! I will make sure that you want for nothing!"

"I…, I don't think…,"

The prince pushed his growing manhood against her front, grinding her bottom into the stone that supported her as he curled his fingers into her golden strands, clinching a handful to draw her forcefully into him, swirling through her lips and kissing her more deeply, rotating his head and pushing harder as the waterfall amplified the intensity of their heartbeats.

He lowered both of his hands and cupped the globes that shaped her jeans and firmly massaged the soft flesh, kneading them in circles and drawing her into his hardness. She squealed in laughter when he lifted her up to a flat spot on the rock, maneuvering himself between her knees, and he pulled her with a mounting hunger into his encompassing embrace.

Amy's head was spinning from an overload of emotions and alcohol, scrambling her ties to everything she had ever known from the past and the unimaginable future she was facing. Ahmed unfastened the button at her waist hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and gave them a swift yank, tearing them loose at the sides, and Amy jolted rigid from his unexpected aggressiveness and pushed him away. "No! Please! Not like this!" she gasped. "I'm so sorry, Ahmed, I'm just, I'm not ready for this yet!"

She thought she saw a glint of anger in his eyes as she hurried off her seat and regained her posture. She couldn't blame him for being upset with her because he obviously thought she was sending him the signals he needed to make him think she wanted this now. He was as worked up as a man could get and not have his release and it took a moment before the prince recovered enough to speak, "Amy, I don't want you to be uncomfortable when we are together. I must gain your trust, and I will! But you have put a yearning in me that I will not be able to control for much longer. I have wanted you for so long! I am aching to feel your body around me! You are so beautiful, so amazing, and I will make you mine, someday soon!"

He had those big puppy dog eyes that softened her when he used them, and she thought his tender confession was sweet.

"I think we had better get back to the party," she said, straitening her clothes as she slipped through the small opening of the cave and disappeared through it to climb the steps leading back up the hill, leaving the prince standing in the middle of the cave still burning with the need to let his passion go.

Amy was almost half way back to the villa when he caught up with her. When they got to the mansion the prince escorted Amy to her room, keeping a close eye on his objective and looking for any sign that she might reconsider his advances, but when they reached her door she thanked him and kissed him lightly on the cheek, "Thank you, Ahmed, for showing me the cave. That was amazing!"

"There are many more things that I will show you, much more wonderful than this, and I look forward to spending more time alone with you, without the burden of work!"

"Goodnight, Ahmed!" she smiled and slipped through the door to the safety of her room before he could counter.

She wasn't sure if it was just the wine or if the prince imposed that much of an effect on her, but something had set about a nagging ache growing within that reminded her of how long it had been since she had experienced a release of her own. Having immersed herself into her work for thinking it would help in getting through the four month tour without the distraction of becoming homesick, she had neglected her own personal needs, and something needed to be done, soon!

A gurgling tub allured her to try and relax and she ran her fingers through the hot, steamy water. She removed the light makeup from her face and tossed her clothes into a hamper in the closet, discarding the torn panties into the waste basket as a casualty of a heated moment. Amy studied the jets to see how she might put them to use and turned them on before she climbed inside. The stylish horse trainer laid back into the pulsing jets as the streams soothed her tired muscles from behind and she started thinking about how far she had evolved since she left home, hardly the cowgirl she had been all of her previous life. It was hard to remember being confined to only one country and having to borrow her grandfather's worn out pickup any time she wanted to go anywhere that a horse wouldn't take her. ' _What would I be doing right now, if I were still there?'_ she asked herself.

But she knew the answer. She had enjoyed spending more and more time with Ty as their proposed wedding came closer to reality. The couple was never apart for more than a day or two and the intensity of the romantic side of their relationship had escalated dramatically. They almost always managed to steal enough time alone for lovemaking at least two times each week, more if the opportunity lent itself, and they had become very in tuned with the others preferences.

The pressure was so distracting that coherent thoughts were almost impossible, dithering between the past and the present, and she needed to stop holding back what was begging from within to be set free.

Fifteen minutes in front of the persistent jets had her skin soft and warm and she didn't bother with putting on her pajamas before she turned out the light and climbed into bed. She snuggled into the heavenly soft sheets and held still for a moment, taking enough time to help her get relaxed and set her mood. She wondered about Ty, if he was still as angry with her as she imagined he would be, or if he had already moved on to someone new and seldom gave her a thought. It pranged her more than she would admit to think of him with someone else, touching them and making them feel like they were the center of his universe. Ty's unfathomable gaze of luminescent green never failed to get to her. He could make her knees begin to fade with only the certain look she knew he saved just for her. Even now, her mind's eye painting pictures of it for her to remember, she could feel it, the tingle he caused to spread from inside her thighs as he amply worked his wiles, and it excited her even with him being so far away. But she especially loved them when she had teased him into a lather from which he could barely hold back, a lust misting his intense gaze as passion overtook him. His hands were careful yet firm, patiently savoring every second in taking his time to explore her body, playing at every sensitive spot that would make her sighs and flickering eyelashes telegraph her hidden secrets to his attention.

He was here, in her mind, and she could feel his fingertips brushing her cheek with the softest caress, kissing her lips as though he needed them for his survival. Her ascending urgency was quickening as she combed her fingers along the top of her belly button, flittering them slowly up and down her flat stomach as she imagined his eyes drawing her in. She let them slide up her chest around the silky smooth curves of her breasts and then she cupped them into a long firm squeeze, rolling her hardening nipples between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, feeling her mound swelling full with her quickening heartbeat. Her knees drew high and she let them part to brace her feet into the soft cloth just below her bottom.

Flattened hands circled firmly at the lower part of her belly, rounding from her hips and over the compressed abdomen, and softened to the faintest touch to lure the tiny bumps of her sensitive skin at either side of the neatly trimmed fuzz that announced the beginning of her most private places.

Amy guided Ty's hands, sending her body deeper into the dream as they skimmed her tingling flesh, coaxing the folds as they presented themselves to searching fingers and forced the swelling pleasure even deeper. Single fingertips traced each outer arch and ever so slightly flicked at the awakening inner lips as they filled with desire to be touched, up and down, stretching to the sides, over and over, pulling them apart and drawing the tip of a finger through the inner moistness which twitched when it was pressed just right, until the flowering petals unfurled into thickening engorged pink flesh surrounding her womanhood.

The touch was Ty's, in her mind, and he knew how to send her higher and higher as he expertly circled the erect essence of her womanhood, pressing it faster and firmer with each pass, allowing one of the fingers to curl under it, stroking from the underside, until her smoldering passion shot a thundering surge from her center all the way to her sharply curled toes and back thorough her writhing hips to her heaving chest, emptying the pent up frustration that had been stealing from her completeness.

She lay still and let her body recover enough so that she could slide her feet down and lower her legs back to the bed. Sweat trickled down from her forehead and she rounded her lips as she tried to feed her heaving lungs, pulling the oxygen back into her that had escaped with her intense orgasm.

A frightening silence crept into the room as she calmed to steady breathing. The realization poured over her that no one was there to hold her as she came back from the top of the highest places to sink into loneliness.

Ty always held her when they had finished. She would roll into his side and nuzzle her cheek into his chest listening to his heartbeat as it slowed, and his gentle fingers would circle into the lose strands of her hair and send her into a place reserved for satisfied lovers at rest.

Fear began to overtake the world class horse trainer because the price of choosing to chase this dream had sent him away heartbroken and torn. Amy didn't know if there was enough of anything in the world to win him back after the way she ended things between them, and she wondered if the dream she had been chasing could ever give her the sweet love, comfort, or promise to still be there for her when she was old.

To Be Continued….


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

From his seat in one of the plush rockers lined up in a row on the front porch, Ty watched a gleaming white Cadillac SUV as it passed by the visitors parking area and pulled into one of the spaces reserved for family. "Got some balls!" he muttered to himself.

It wasn't unusual to see fancy vehicles around Fairfield Stables. Ty had learned that Lisa Stillman came from 'old money.' Her family had done well since the early boom days in the Alberta oil industry and many of her clients were of the same mold. Lisa's uncle, her father's brother, was the rancher of the family while her dad had taken over the family oil business in Calgary. The popular city girl used to love to bring her rich friends out to her uncle's riding stables about an hour south of town at least twice a month and spend their weekends riding the beautiful horses that he kept here.

The debutant wanted her uncle's lifestyle. It suited her more to spend her days in flannel and denim than lacy dresses. Lisa eventually inherited the ranch from her uncle and built the stables into a successful operation known around the world for quality pleasure and show horses, and recently she had expanded it to include the stables at her other home in Toulon, France to better service her wealthy European clients.

The curious houseguest was surprised to see a very attractive early thirtyish woman step out of the vehicle dressed in a silk blouse left untucked over expensive looking skin tight tan riding pants. The visitor looked around Lisa's beautiful flower garden and casually walked up the hedge trimmed stone sidewalk appearing to know her way around, like she had been here before.

"I _so_ love Lisa's roses! They are just gorgeous this time of year! Hello! You must be Ty!"

Astonished, the young man stood and reached for her outstretched hand and stammered, "Uh, yes, I'm Ty?" uncertain of why this woman would even know who he was, since he didn't really belong here.

"Lisa must have told you about me? I'm Barbara Bilsen." she introduced herself.

Then it clicked, "Dr. Bilsen! The shrink! Yes, she did say that you might be coming by. Look, I don't know what she told you but…,"

The stunning brunette held up her hand to stop him, not batting an eye at his swat at her profession, "Although I have two degrees in psychology, I actually specialize in motivating people more than rattling around in their heads and trying to get to the bottom of their potty training issues. Call me Bar, or else..., well, I shouldn't threaten you until you at least know me a little better, eh!" she smiled at him like she had known him for years. "Don't worry about my having any predesigned ideas about who you are, Ty. You are the only one who can show me that, but, I am here as a friend of a friend who asked for my help, and if Lisa has been accurate in her brief description of you, and she always is, I think we will become friends as well, if you'll give me the chance to get acquainted."

She was a lot to take in on a first introduction, but he trusted Jack's new wife to have his best interest at heart. This woman had a straight shooting style that he liked, having learned to quickly evaluate strangers as a child after being continually passed around to ever changing living arrangements, and he decided to go along with what he figured to be a pre-planned intervention. "Well, I could use all the friends I can get. Haven't had many of those, so far."

"Actually, Ty, I can say the same thing! You see, people look at other people and they assume that since they are socially active, popular, rich, pretty, whatever…, that they must have a lot of friends. But the truth is, if you would ask those people how many _real_ friends they have, ones that they could trust with anything important in their lives, say, with their money when investing in a risky business deal, or with needing help taking care of a family member who is in trouble, or _anything_ that stands to make a big difference in their lives, most would narrow the list drastically, if being honest. I, for instance, would consider four, maybe five people at the most, as friends of that stature. And, just so you know right up front, Lisa is one of them. We go way back. Lisa was my older sister's best friend until she died a few years ago, and we have been through all of the best times together, and the worst, and I think I can speak for her when I tell you that we trust each other with _everything_ , and I hope we can at least come to a mutual trust soon, you and I. So, whaddya say we go to the stables and get a couple of those beautiful horses tacked up for a wonderful ride on a perfect Sunday afternoon?"

Ty figured he needed to pay special attention to his words and actions because this lady was distractingly beautiful, enough so to make him say things that might make her think he was looney bin material, if he wasn't careful.

* * *

Lisa kept a close eye on the pair through the window of her reading room as they talked and began to walk across the drive to the stables. "It looks like they hit it off OK! I think they're off to a good start!" she whispered to Jack, who nodded over a fresh cup of his early afternoon caffeinated "real" coffee while he anticipated using a uni-knot to repair the four lures on the table beside him. He had cut them out of various trees or bushes that Lisa had snagged during their last trip to his old fishing cabin in the mountains.

"Good! Ty is stronger than he thinks he is, and I hope Barbara can make him see that."

"She will! I don't doubt Bar for a second! She's a tough one, and smart, so she will get to the bottom of the problem. And, you should stop calling her Barbara before she busts you for calling her that, again! She is your friend too, you know!" she perked up, kissed her older husband on the tip of his nose, and scurried off to her office to check for an e-mail from her business in France to see if the deal to sell one of her high end stallions had gone through as agreed to by a wealthy shipping tycoon from Spain.

* * *

They rode for some distance before either of them spoke. The off the clock professional lagged behind just enough to make a few observations about her trail riding companion and took some mental notes regarding his demeanor, a tactic she used to evaluate her patients for things they would not voluntarily give up about themselves, or even realize it was so. "Tell me, Ty, what has been bothering you? Why have you been feeling so depressed?" she asked, cutting right to the point and testing his state of awareness about his situation.

The frankness of her question caught him off guard. All of the social workers he had dealt with in the juvenile system wanted to ask one thousand questions, starting at the top and peeling him apart like a textbook onion to reveal the many complicated layers before they would all come to the same conclusion, that he was fucked up beyond repair, and this approach was nothing like he expected it to be. "Lisa didn't tell you, about Amy?"

"Why don't _you_ tell me about Amy? She prodded.

' _Damn! Who does she think she is_?' the spur of the moment patient wondered, still trying to get a handle on his life after his fiancée had put a dagger through his heart.

The trail meandered alongside the Highwood River. It showed off manicured shrubs and trimmed grass, the kind of things Lisa's wealthy clients expected when they came to Fairfield to satisfy their 'get back to nature and rough it' cowboy fix. Birds fluttered over the riders' heads and squirrels darted from tree to tree while the duo sauntered along the trail, and the occasional fish flopped above the surface of the river in shady places trying to snag some lunch.

Ty was surprised at how easy it was to talk with Bar, as she had told him to call her. She veered off course for a side trail through the woods that only Lisa and her closest friends knew about, extending the ride and buying more time for the 'off the books' session. He couldn't believe how much she got out of him. He had never told anyone, even Amy, his most trusted confidant up to this point in his life, some of the stories he relayed to his new friend.

"So, Ty, what do you think about Amy now?" she socked him with the big one when he wasn't looking for it, although he should have been, considering her natural candor.

"Boy, you don't pull any punches, do you?"

"If you are expecting the usual game of peeling onions to reveal the layers game, forget it! Since we aren't on the clock, neither of us has time for that shit!" she said with a sly smile.

He sputtered and choked as he tried to hold it back, but when he busted out laughing they both cackled until they had nearly exhausted themselves, but then she repeated the question and he knew by her sincerity that she wanted a proper answer.

"I guess I'm still confused, to be honest. I loved her more than I even knew was possible to feel that way about _anyone_! I never had anyone before that I…," he hesitated, looking for a word that would explain his thought.

"That you what, Ty?" she gently prompted him.

"That I really loved, and needed to love me back, that is, besides my mom and dad. Amy was strike three. I guess I still have trouble believing that after the things we went through together as kids, and later, after we got a little older, that somebody, somewhere, flipped a switch and turned it off, just like that!" he raised his hand and waived it at nothing more than a notion that something out there was trying to cause him grief. "She turned away from me so fast! We were best friends! And, more than that!" stopping short of revealing too many intimate details about Jack's granddaughter to one of the cranky old cowboys' friends. "I thought we knew everything about each other, but I guess she had dreams that I didn't fit into. Maybe she didn't know it herself until she saw what kind of life she had available to her. I don't blame her, though, now that I've had some time to think about it. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to get everything they ever wanted if it was going to be handed to them like a package with a big fat bow around it, knowing all they had to do was to reach out and take it?"

Not letting up, Bar pushed him even more, "Do you think you got what you really deserved?"

"I, I don't know?" he faltered, "I wouldn't wish what happened to me on _anyone_ , but I don't know what made me think she would be happy living a life like we would have had together. It would have been tough, you know? I couldn't have given her very much, at least in the beginning. She has a great future ahead of her now, and now that she has found someone who can give her the things she deserves, she can have them."

"What do you think she deserves?" Barbara challenged him, trying to pry loose another chunk of the load he was carrying. "A new car, a fancy horse, a big house, someone to bring her breakfast in bed, if that's what she wants? What do you think it is that she will have because of someone else's money that will replace what must have been true love?"

"I don't know! She is the one you would have to ask to find that out!"

"Exactly!"

"Huh?"

"You did the best you could, Ty. It seems to me that you have done your part! Think of where you were in your life when you got to Jack's ranch. You got your GED and applied to get into vet school which you finished without any help from anyone! I sure as hell don't know how you managed to work full time and go to school and get the grades you did! You have earned a great career because you knocked yourself out for it and now you have the means to start building a satisfying life! You did it because you wanted to be proud of who you are and to someday be able to take care of your future wife and family! You knew what you wanted, worked your ass off, and you made it! But, here's the big question. What was it that Amy wanted? Does _she_ even know? Is it your fault that she can't seem to make up her mind what kind of life she wants? NO! It isn't! She has to do that for _herself, just like you do_! I know it sucks to have someone that you love to change their mind about including you in their life! I have had it happen to me, just like most people who have taken a chance with putting their love on the line for someone. Just because Amy thinks she wants something else out of her life doesn't make _you_ any kind of failure! Don't you _ever_ forget that! You have to learn to take care of yourself so you can take care of the right lady when she comes along, and she will, just don't try to fix everything in a few weeks or else I am going to have to start charging you for peeling onions!"

Ty listened as she let him have it with a display of energetic gesturing and straight in the eye determination. He knew Bar believed what she was telling him, and he knew she was right. This amazing woman was a remarkable motivator and her enthusiasm helped him to see it.

The doctor could see in Ty's eyes that her point had gotten across and then she decided he was ready for the question that she anticipated taking more time to ask, but he had surpassed her previous evaluation of him and she took aim at her real target, "Do you ever think about ending your life?"

"Damn, you really…,"

"Do you ever think about ending your life?" she asked again, forcing him into a corner intending to make him face his dilemma.

"No! Not like that! I mean, I got so drunk a couple of times, and feeling sorry for myself, that I wondered if I might be better off if I just gave up, but I couldn't do it!" he admitted, "I-couldn't-do-it. I was pissed at the world and, to be honest, I think the reason I even considered doing something that drastic was because it was the only thing I could think of that would hurt her bad enough to get even, if it would have even mattered to her. I wanted to get even and hurt her back! How stupid could I get!

"Always think ahead to tomorrow, Ty. Life is like a storm. It's the same for everybody, no matter what our status in life may be. Think of it this way, when we are getting along just great it is inevitable that things will eventually change to challenge us, meaning we must face going into the storm when we see it coming. Then, when the storm hits, we have to find a way to fight it so we can survive. After we have dealt with the storm and come through it to the other side, it passes, and life gets back to a more peaceful, calm, and predictable time that most of us enjoy. So, what then? We learn to prepare for the next storm, because there will likely be another one someday, and then the whole thing starts all over again."

Ty listened to her logic, and he got it, "I guess I am through _this_ storm, for now, God knows I've had my share, and I am just looking for the enjoyable part," he scoffed.

"You are much closer than you think, Ty. You are on more solid ground than you realize, and if you allow it, better things will soon come to you."

Two hours had passed since Ty and Bar left the stables. Dread had turned into an enlightening and uplifting experience for Ty, giving him new hope in taking on the problems he had been struggling with.

* * *

The newlyweds were sitting in their front porch rockers watching for the pair to return from their ride. "Why do you keep looking over there for, Lis? The trail is that way!" Jack pointed at the obvious, wondering what she was thinking.

"Not today! They will be coming from beside the river, over there. Since it has taken this long for them to get back, I am assuming their time has gone well, and that means she took the back trail through the woods. Ah, see!" she pointed to show her contrary husband, knowing that he had rather quibble for the fun of it than actually care about the result of the debate. The riders dismounted in front of the stable and began to untack their horses, still chatting, and Lisa gave Jack the smile she loved to offer him as the subtle way she had of saying ' _I told you so_!'

"Looks like they hit it off!" Jack observed.

"Yup! It looks promising from here, at least!"

The pair traipsed through the flower garden and up the stone walk side by side, having a more casual conversation now, and Ty said something to Bar that made her belly laugh, something Lisa knew she only did with people she truly liked.

"So, just what is so funny?" Lisa smiled expectantly at the two and patted the chair beside her for them to find a seat and talk before her younger friend had to go back to the city.

"Well, I asked Ty why he hadn't brought Harley out here to the stables yet," referring to Ty's gelding still boarded at Heartland which the two had talked about on the trail.

"And?"

"I asked him if he felt like Harley wouldn't fit in because of being a cowpony among all these fine stallions, and he says, 'No, because I don't want him to get any ideas from these pampered studs around here that he is going to get his tail braided and start going go out on dates instead of trail rides!"

Lisa spit the sip of coffee she had just taken over the top of her cup which caused everybody to break up in childish laughter.

Still wiping tears from her eyes, Lisa looked at Ty and said, "You bring Harley out here any time you want, and I will give specific instructions about leaving his tail alone!" she laughed again. Although, he might enjoy meeting some new friends!"

"Yeah, we could both use more of those," Ty said with a sincere nod to his newest one. "I hate to leave good company, but I offered to help Bill with his rounds tonight, and I'm gonna be late."

"Ok Ty, I know he will appreciate it," Lisa nodded.

Jack and the two women sat and scrutinized the volunteer stable hand as he walked up to Bill's new white truck and peeked in the driver's window. Lisa had just bought it for the thirty year employee of the ranch for him to use as he pleased, complete with title and registration, and he liked showing it off to anybody who would hold still for the demonstration of all its bells and whistles, Ty being the latest victim.

The lone male of the front porch assembly slapped the arm of his chair and announced, "Whelp, I'm, gonna leave you two to it then!" and got up out of his chair.

"What's the matter, Jack? Can't hack two old women while they sit on the front porch and catch up?" Barbara teased.

Jack just smiled, nodded, and said, "You're a long way from knowing what old is! There's just too damn many good lookin' women out here at the same time! Can't concentrate on anything useful!"

The women giggled like the old friends they were. Lisa's pal loved the way she could get to the tough old cowboy and keep him off balance.

"I'm just behind on tyin' lures for our fishin' trip next week, is all! Lis likes to put 'em in the bushes and trees, you know. I don't suppose "Miss Angler of the Year" told you about the whopper she caught out of the river up at my old fishing cabin, did she?"

"As a matter of fact, she is quite proud of that fish! Said it was the best meal she's ever had!"

Jack nodded again, "Yes, I would have to agree!" and slipped through the door to the peace and quiet of his corner of the library where he kept his lure tying equipment. "Always good to see ya Barbr…, uh, Bar!"

Bar turned to her oldest friend and smiled, "I am so happy to see you two like this. He is adorable around you!"

"Yeah, he can be really sweet, and, he can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but he's _my_ pain in the ass!" and they cackled again.

The women rocked lazily, smiling at watching the older man torturing Ty by raising the hood to show him the spotless engine compartment, "He is quite the young man, your Ty! He doesn't seem to have a clue as to what he has to offer the girls. He is a thinker, he's honest, and loyal as the day is long. I can't tell you the last time I met a man of any age that impresses me as much as he does! If I didn't think it would send him into shock to show him how a girl takes care of her guy, I might be thinking about something younger!"

Lisa's mouth flew open in mock surprise, knowing how Bar liked to see if she could get the best of her friend, "Yeah, he is a handsome one, eh?" and they giggled again like two schoolgirls window shopping for a date to the spring formal.

"Did you have any luck with getting him to loosen up and tell you anything you can use to help him?"

"He's gonna be OK, Lisa. He had it rough, as a kid, and he still carries a lot of that stuff with him, as you would expect, but he has a strong character and if we can get him to believe in himself, because he never has learned to do that yet, he should be fine." The concerned expression of the doctor's longtime friend opened the need to elaborate further, "He had nothing to go on when he first moved in at Jack's place, after he had just turned seventeen, I think? He fully invested himself into the first relationships he had ever considered worthy of caring about. He needed them desperately! Lou as a big sister, Jack as a father figure, and Amy, well, he put everything he had into trying to please her, and when he felt like he had failed…," the Dr. explained, not having ethical issues in discussing the case with a third party since it was for a friend, off the books, "when she rejected him in Europe, he lost most of his self-worth, what little of it there was to loose. He felt didn't deserve her love in the first place, and the inevitable finally caught up with him. He believed he had it coming for reaching above his status for someone more deserving than him for a successful life. He is on his way, though. I can tell he is tired of feeling like a football that is being kicked around for the pleasure of others. Now, for the next phase!"

"Next phase? What do you have in mind?"

"Tell me more about Amy. What is that girl's deal? I mean, how can any single young woman worth her salt look at that young man over there and not get her knickers in a knot?" she asked, smiling, but with a hint of mischief showing through.

"Seriously?" Amy's step grandmother scoffed at her best friend's notoriously horny little sister.

"Look, Lisa, Amy must have cared for him. Why would she agree to marry Ty if she didn't? What do you think happened? Do you think she ever truly loved him?"

"Yes, I do! Take it from someone who watched the two of them from almost the very beginning. I believed they had the kind of storybook love affair that few people ever experience in real life. They were both strong willed teenagers, and they fought, sometimes with blood and guts kinds of arguments while they tried to figure out how it was supposed to work between them, but they would always find a way to work it out, eventually, and seemed to be the better for it each time they made up. It was such a shame to see her throw it all away."

The doctor thought, and then asked, "What about her childhood? Any notable problems there?"

"Oh, my word, yes!" Her dad was a rodeo cowboy, one of the best rodeo cowboys ever!"

"Tim Felming! I knew that name was familiar!" the doctor made the association.

"Yes! Go figure! Anyway, Amy was five when he got hurt at the Stampede. He got hooked on pain killers and spiraled out of control, ultimately causing a messy divorce from Amy's mother, Marion, and never being heard from again until Marion died ten years later and he came back home for the funeral. It wasn't until a few weeks later that Amy even found out he was back. They've been trying to figure out how to fit back together ever since."

Bar thought for a minute, and then went father, "This prince, Ahmed al Saeed, what do you know about him?"

"Well, he is the prince from one of the countries of the UAE. He is obviously extremely wealthy, good looking, big into the World Games like his father, the king, and has been on a mission to steal Amy away since not long after he met her. His horses are among the finest in the world and he has used them to get Amy's attention, which he apparently has full time now, and he has to be the biggest reason for shit hitting the fan when Ty went over there to Europe to see her."

"Do you have any idea how much trouble _Amy_ is in?"

"What do you mean by _that_?"

"Think about it Lis! A young woman who has never been off the farm without adult supervision or had much in the way of luxury in her life, living at a ranch where all she has ever known was hard work and doing without, all of a sudden is flirting with being the next Princess Grace of Monaco? That prince is playing her like a fiddle and she had better be strong enough for what is coming, or else she is in serious trouble, probably worse than Ty, because she is the one out there burning bridges that she will want to cross again someday!"

"Do you think she will come back and want to get back together with Ty? That would be awful for him right now, to have decisions like that to deal with mixed with the kind of mistrust he must be feeling!"

"He told me that her obligation with the prince is up soon, maybe only a few weeks?"

"Yes, Jack and Lou are anxious for her to get home, if she even comes back. I still don't know if Amy has decided for sure. She hasn't been communicating with the family at all!"

"Um,humm. She's coming back, alright! I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but I'll give you all of Saturday morning to draw a crowd to watch me kiss your butt on the courthouse steps if she doesn't try to see him within a day or two after she gets back! All of the attention she is getting from this prince, all of the success with her job, that stuff is going to fade someday. He is probably doing all he can to make Amy feel like she is on top of the world right now, but he can only put up the façade for so long before one of these days his true colors are going to fly, and she ain't gonna like it! She will be looking for her comforting blanket and he needs to be ready for her when she comes looking for him! As you know, she can fuck up his world quicker than anyone, and she will, if he's not ready for her!"

Bar's blunt analysis set Lisa back in her chair, "So, what can we do? I have talked to Jack and Lou, of course, and we are ready to do whatever it takes to get Ty past this. Maybe I should talk to Lou about Amy! I believe she will agree with you, now that I think about some of the remarks she has made about Ahmed!"

"It will take some time, mind you. Ty is a perceptive young man and he will know when you are manipulating him or going out of your way to unnecessarily treat him with 'kid gloves,' so I would suggest that all of you treat him like you are confident that he is strong enough to make it on his own and let him pick up on that as a vote of confidence. Watch for signs that he is faltering, of course, I'll send you a list of things to look for, but when we get him to realize that he can make it on his own, without having Amy as the idealized center of his universe, that's when he can move on, but not before then. Do you plan on keeping him here at Fairfield? Will he go along with staying for a while?"

"No, he wants to go back to Calgary tonight."

"Ok, then do the best you can to keep in contact without being a pain in his ass. I might even drop in on him, since he is in town anyway!"

Lisa gave the younger girl a look of accusatory concern.

"Don't worry! It's only to make sure he will be prepared when hurricane Amy blows into town."

"Thanks, Bar, you don't know how much this means to all of us. If something had happened to him, especially because of the way it came to be, I shudder to think what it would have done to that family."

"You mean, _your_ family?" the doctor prompted.

"Exactly! _My_ family. I guess we _all_ have our difficulties sometimes trying to fit into our new lifestyles," the middle aged newlywed agreed.

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Anwar and Izzat completed their last session of the day by executing a fast series of jumps set up by their head trainer to challenge what she considered to be a quick tempered rider and his mutinous horse. Their timing together was markedly improved over the last few sessions Amy had worked with them. "That was great, Anwar! Much better!" she praised her team captain, and to herself she stifled her personal opinion, "Finally!" after having had just about as much attitude from the prince's arrogant friend and team leader as she could tolerate for one day. "Make sure to brush Izzat down and let him know how well he did today!" the insistent coach instructed her disinclined pupil, more high strung than the stallion he rode in her estimation, and she noticed that he again seemed to have little appreciation for her critique, no matter if it was favorable or not.

"That was amazing, Amy!" the voice came from behind her as she bent over to pick up her briefcase just outside the arena's gate. She had been avoiding all unnecessary interaction with the prince since her near miss at his villa but Ahmed was steadfast at finding her when he knew she would have to face him.

"It appears that Anwar has control of his horse again!"

"So it seems," she answered flatly.

Noticing a lingering apprehensiveness from the object of his romantic designs, Ahmed deflected her evasiveness with a proposition, "Come with me, Amy, I have something to show you!"

' _Shit!_ ' she thought, ' _What now?_ '

A driver was waiting just outside the door and he ushered the couple into the back of his long black limousine before pulling away for an unknown destination. The head strong rancher's daughter had always persisted at bucking her sister's advice to proceed with caution around the more experienced player that she accused Ahmed of being by rejecting the idea that her new employer had been going exorbitantly out of his way to win her affection.

Lou's suspicions spiked when Ahmed first offered her sister a job out of the blue to be his personal trainer by using 'Zeus,' a well-known jumper his father had ridden to the world championship two years prior, knowing the ambitious young trainer would jump at the chance to work with a horse of his breeding. After working closely together for weeks, the naturally gifted horse whisperer had successfully managed to help the prince and his stallion perform better as a team. As a gift of his appreciation, the grateful client brought her a custom made five thousand dollar saddle adorned with "Miracle Girl," the name she used professionally to promote her training clinics and billings when she competed in horse starting competitions. Adding to the embellishment of his first gift was the additional disproportionate bonus check which almost doubled her normal annual earnings. The prince presented it to Amy in front of Ty, her fiancé, a gesture Lou considered to be his first challenge to the engaged couple's relationship and tacky for a well-groomed aristocrat. Ahmed al Saeed had been in the cross hairs of the wary older sister ever since.

An up and coming leader in worldwide equestrian circles, Amy tried to cling to the notion that Ahmed's enthusiasm for their friendship was based on the improvement of the royal team and her unique way with his horses, that he needed to prove to the world that he had matured from his notoriety as a royal gallivant, and that he was ready to assume his position as leader of a small oil rich country in need of a king after the recent death of his father. Admitting otherwise would imply that the aspiring head trainer's talent with the prince's world class stable and team were of secondary importance, if not outright insignificant, and would have threatened her justification for coming to Europe in the first place.

Increasing pressure from Ahmed had begun to make Amy feel tested lately and caused her to rethink things between them. As sweet of him as she thought he was in an impatient, adolescent kind of way, she finally realized the more experienced suitor had been throwing all of the tricks in the book at her, just like Lou had warned her about before she came to Europe, and she felt like she had to regain some facade of control over the situation because she had almost given in to him at his villa outside of Paris.

A nagging guilt of facing Lou in two weeks and having to admit to her that she may have not been completely misguided about Ahmed's motives kept the cautious woman quiet during the ride in the back of the royal limousine. She thought through the accession that she needed to face Ty if for nothing else than to tell him she was sorry and knew she reacted too harshly with him during his visit in France, that their failure wasn't his fault, and to see if there might be any chance to make things right with the man who had been the most important person in her life only three months ago.

Their route took them to a hangar at the airport where the prince kept all of the teams support vehicles and equipment while they were visiting the new venue in Barcelona, Spain. Ahmed tried to break the silence with small talk and he asked, "Did you find the villa in France to your liking?"

"It was beautiful, Ahmed! I have never been anyplace that could compare!"

"I am glad that you liked it! I have many more exciting places and things to share with you!"

Amy needed to change the subject, and asked, "It's so upsetting to hear that Aleah has not been found. Is there any news?"

"Nothing further has been discovered, but I have my personal investigators working to try and find her."

The last anyone remembered seeing the twenty two year old trainer's assistant was late on the evening of the party at Ahmed's villa and Amy feared that something unthinkable may have befallen her. Aleah had shown her supervisor a rare and valued friendship that had been one of the best parts of the Albertan's personal life away from home and she had been the trusted confidant who warned her admired friend of gossip running through the team about their suspicions of a romantic relationship with Ahmed and his 'cowgirl' being the main reason for receiving her position with the team. The worried friend of the missing girl did not buy into the explanation that Aleah had run away with another one of her friends and would probably just turn up somewhere like Ahmed tried to speculate. As overseer of the grooms Amy knew her assistant was a steady worker who loved her job and it was unlike her to miss any work without a very good reason. She also knew the longer Aleah remained missing the chances of her ever being found were rapidly diminishing.

The driver waited for the twosome to exit the vehicle and after Ahmed punched a few numbers into a keypad beside the door at the side of the large building Amy followed him inside. The prince smiled as he exclaimed, "You will be pleased to see what I have brought for you!" A temporary set of stables were set up on one side of the hangar and they contained three of the most impressive animals she had ever seen. As they neared the pen Ahmed turned to her and boasted, "These horses were brought here from my royal stables, Amy. They are the finest horses in all the world! Pick the one you feel is the better of the three."

For sentimental reasons the cowgirl thought Spartan, her black gelding, was the most valuable horse in the world but tried not to gawk at these three thoroughbreds worth their weight in gold and stumbled, "They are beautiful, Ahmed! But I can't say which of them is any different than the other without spending some time with them."

"As you wish! I will have them sent to the arena immediately! There, you can take as much time as you need to determine which one will be your new horse!"

Dazed and set aback from his grandest gesture yet, Amy tried in vain to respond to the prince only managing a breathless, "W-Why, Ahmed?"

"Consider this as a signing bonus, for when you return from your upcoming visit to Canada!"

"But…, you are not serious?"

"But, I am! I need you back with the team! I know you have fulfilled your obligation to manage the team during the trials, but I need you to come back and resume your duties as my head trainer for the games! The team has done so well since you joined us! I feel that we need to continue to work together, and together, we will win the world championship, just as my father has done!"

"I, uh, I need some time to think about this, Ahmed! This is so unexpected!"

"Come! We will go to the arena and await their arrival!"

After spending an hour to getting the horses back to the arena and into their acquisitioned stalls Amy stood with Ahmed beside the first stallion, Barriq, alone in the vacated building. The prince explained to her the English translation of his name as 'bright shining' and as they watched him the name certainly seemed to fit. She thought Barriq might be the most beautiful specimen of the equine form that she had ever seen. His coat glistened over a muscular frame, not an ounce of fat on him, and he stood proud and tall like he commanded to be recognized as the superb example of royalty that he was!

"You like him, yes?" Ahmed asked, smiling like he did when he knew that he had gained her favor.

"Wow! He is so beautiful, Ahmed! He is amazing!"

"Tomorrow, after your sessions are finished, we will set up the arena for you to ride the horses privately. You can take as much time as you like! But you need to make your decision before you return to Canada, Amy, I have buyers here in Spain that are interested in them and the sale of these horses will go a long way to finance the team during the WEG! But, as I told you, the one you choose will be yours! All you have to do is to decide which one you prefer!"

The traditional rescuer of cast away horses was dumbstruck by the princes' persistence with such a valuable offer, hypnotized by the lust in the eyes of her pursuing admirer, and as he moved to kiss her she felt dazzled and confused, unable to sidestep his advances, and he took her willingness to go along as a signal to escalate his passion and take the next step. He maneuvered her against a wall beyond the stall and pressed hard against her. His tongue flicked between her lips and knowing he almost had her where he wanted her like this once before inspired him to push her but just as he attempted to cup her breasts Amy pushed him away abruptly. "Stop, Ahmed! We can't, I can't do this!" Anger surged in his eyes, but just before the vulnerable woman thought her amorous suitor might go farther he flashed his trademark smile and said, "I am sorry, Amy, once again you are telling me with your eyes that you want to accept me as your lover, but your mind is holding you back! I only want what makes you happy, and I will wait for you, for when you are ready."

' _Just a few more days!_ ' she thought. That was all that separated a welcome departure from her successful tour in Europe from the safe surroundings of Alberta and the home that she had finally started to miss. Amy had been thinking a lot about Ty, the breakup, and how unforgivable it was to have hurt him like she knew she had done. Her mind had been made up, she was going home with every intention to ask for his forgiveness and see if there was any hope of getting Ty back, but this new twist had sent her mind for another tumble at having to yet again make a sudden life changing decision. Awestruck and divided, the wavering horse whisperer knew she needed to find the courage to tell Ahmed quickly, before she changed her mind again, and just as she squared up her shoulders to explain her decision, "Go! See your family and get some rest, then I will bring you back to Europe to continue what we have begun! You are amazing, Amy, and the world needs to know what I know about your abilities! Let me help you to show them!"

"I have something I need to tell you, Ahmed," she attempted to force the confession that she would be turning down his offer and staying in Canada.

Ahmed brushed off her words and took a step back, "Spend some time with the horses. I will have a limo here in a few minutes to take you to the hotel. We will meet after your training has ended tomorrow and you can choose which will be your new horse!" The prince spun on his heels and just as quickly as the incident had happened, he was walking through the door and gone.

"This is crazy!" she muttered to Barriq, who paid the stranger no attention, "Just a few more days, and I'm outta here!" A genuine Albertan farm girl at heart, the "Miracle Girl" missed the security of home and wanted to make things right with her situation here before she returned to Canada for good this time.

* * *

Fifteen minutes had passed before the phone buzzed in her pocket and when the pensive woman saw it was her driver calling to take her to the hotel she asked, "I am not quite finished here. Would you come for me after a while, maybe in an hour?"

Left alone in the tranquility of the darkened arena, only noises from the uneasy new horses settling into their stalls broke the stillness and dim lights barely made it possible for Amy to see well enough to find her way, but she needed to stand in the middle of the soft dirt because it was the only thing she had found this far from home that she could touch or feel that reminded her of the round pen beside her grandfather's barn and the jumping arena across from the front yard of the ranch house. She thought of how many hours had she spent in those places while she was growing up. She could imagine being a young girl watching her mother calling to an at-risk horse, never giving up and keeping at it until the job was finished, even if it took until well after dark, and seeing the satisfaction in her hero's tired eyes when the animal finally accepted that he wanted to be a companion to a human again, having been saved from a fate that the tween aged girl could not bear to think about.

After a while the lonesome dreamer receded deeper into her memories, sitting down from where she had been standing, and scooped the loose dirt through her fingers as she thought about the choices she would have to make, no longer able to put them off as she always seemed to do.

The self-demeaning cowgirl had secretly begun in the last year to regret forgoing a full scholarship at the university of Colorado. She believed that she had been left behind by her classmates and had let the opportunity of a lifetime pass her by, missing the chance to have a career that she could be proud of. But now, as her old high school friends were graduating university and moving on to their exciting new careers, she had found her place as someone exalted worldwide in her profession. There was a huge satisfaction in being able to show those who thought she was crazy for the decision she made that it was the right decision after all.

What held her back from cutting all ties to the past and satisfying her curiosity of the promising future was too many unanswered questions about her life back home, the memories of her mother and the days growing up on the ranch, and that she wanted to try and rekindle the relationship that she might have been too quick to discard. Also, the 'little voice' in her head that still clouded the back of her mind wondering about the things her older sister had told her still needed to be answered.

Lou's suspicions of Ahmed's intentions must have had some merit, but somehow it was more complicated than that. Ty was a good man, she had no second guesses about that, but the prince was more than ready to give her anything and everything she could ever ask for. He was handsome, smart, wealthy beyond her comprehension, and she liked the way he pursued her. It made her feel special, and for reasons that she hadn't fully grasped, he aroused a new sexual awareness that she never knew she had before. Ahmed was a man who knew what he wanted and he wanted her so badly that he could make the world move for her, if she asked him to. The lonely single woman could feel his heat when he was near and she was only kidding herself if she denied thinking about what he would be like if she stopped resisting his advances. Amy had to admit that a forbidden desire had been aroused for Ahmed to be so aggressive, not shy and unsure as Ty had been most of the time she had known him, but more than anything else, it was the intoxicating feeling of success that she had enjoyed while working with the prince and the international attention he had brought into her life that had made it so confusing to try and bridge the gap into her future or give it all up and return to her former life. She knew that if things went any farther with the relentless admirer that all ties to her past would be broken and there would be no way back to the life she would be leaving behind. Ahmed was obviously getting impatient and more frustrated from each of their brushes with a heightened commitment to each other and it was her fault for not taking the steps to make him understand that she felt confused and threatened and wanted to return to her home. Complicating the issue even further, as a woman so far away from home, she knew her once in a lifetime job depended on getting along with her boss and feared if he took being turned down badly everything she had worked for might be ruined at the last minute.

Amy knew she was going to have to find a way to quench the fascination of letting any relationship with this much different kind of man than she was prepared for to move any farther forward. She was already teetering on the brink of no return to the life that she had imagined as working with horses at Heartland, with Ty as her partner, and she could not let herself give up on her original dream without at least a fight to preserve it. The conservative small town cowgirl had always been hesitant for changes, slow to accept them when life tried to make her grow up, but big things were happening for her and it was time to make some hard decisions about what dream she was to follow.

Growing tired from carrying the weight of so many important decisions, Amy reached for her phone to call the driver and have him take her back to the hotel at this late hour, but just as she was about to dial a commotion from the door shattered the silence and muted voices grew nearer outside the arena's fence. Frightened by the sudden change of her situation in the empty building, Amy sat still for not wanting to be discovered alone because there was no way to know if she would be safe without knowing who was there. She slowly crept to her feet and scrutinized the obscure figures as they walked in the shadows to a darkened stall just across the aisle. She listened to the muffled voices to try and determine if they were there to harm the horses or steal equipment but she could not make out what they were saying. The trainer knew the stall was vacant except for some spare bales of hay and obstacles she occasionally used to change up the look of the jumps.

There was a long period of silence exaggerated by darkness and fear but the voices eventually returned accompanied by subtle movements out of her line of sight. Shadows played against the far wall when two figures stood together and she was surprised to see what was obviously a female figure raise her arms as her partner flipped her top away and began to caress her small breasts. He kissed her passionately as the fondling grew more aggressive and the male picked his partner up by the waist and sat her on the stack of bales. Working between her legs, he grabbed her under her knees and yanked her toward him. They writhed together in a matted ghostly blur for a minute and Amy blinked at seeing the man twirl the slender feminine figure face down on the hay and rip her panties off her body, cast them aside, and position himself to mount her like one of the stallions approaching a mare. Stunned and silent, the observer could see the silhouette of hardness ready to enter his shadowy partner and her heart skipped a beat when the woman raised her hips to meet him. She listened to the lovers working at enjoying each other as their pace quickened, their flesh slapping together with a pronounced rhythm and subtle moans emanated from the dark stall in time to the shadows performing the erotic demonstration. Moaning louder as she neared her climax, the woman's sexual outcry was disturbingly arousing to Amy as she imagined her arousal, mesmerized at never having seen humans perform the act before, but this reminded her of the first sex she had ever seen behind her grandpa's barn when she witnessed a well-endowed stud mount a ready and willing mare, her tail raised as she tempted her mate, and watched the powerful beasts kicking and lurching in the primal moment until his ample release finished the deed.

Spying on the couple in secret was like reliving that lascivious act, only this time she knew what the receiver of passion was experiencing and it excited her even more in playing the part of the stealth voyeur. The female exploded around her lover and as she wailed in ecstasy he started to pound against her mercilessly, driving into her so hard that Amy was sure she detected the moans of pleasure turn to cries of anguish. As the man neared his release there was a gurgling noise that did not sound like it should have been part of the experience and at that moment the male reached an orgasm so powerful that it contorted his back sharply upward, volatile and sporadic, and a ruthless growl escaped his lungs as he rode his passion until it waned.

Eerie silence crept over the darkness of the building as the shadows disappeared from view. The witness was afraid to let out even a breath for fear she would be discovered, and trying to be as invisible as she could make herself, buried her face in the dirt on the opposite side of the fence when the man strode from the stall so close that she could have reached out and touched him as he passed. The door rattled open, slammed closed, and then there was quiet, and she waited a few more seconds before lifting her head to look for the woman because she hadn't noticed any movement from the stall since the man had left. Slowly, Amy clambered to her feet and crept upright looking for any sign of danger, scanning all available avenues for escape, if necessary, and she slipped between the rails of the fence. Walking with trepidation, she was drawn toward the incoherent distress coming from the stall, someone sobbing and gagging for breath, and when she got the nerve, scanned around the opening to look inside. She was stunned to see the woman curled up into a ball, disheveled and apparently injured, and went to her to try and help her sit up.

Amy moaned in disgust and tears filled her eyes when the recognized the woman as Rasha, one of the youngest of her crew. She was overwhelmed to see her coworker here like this and she tried to hug the victim who panicked upon realizing someone was with her again and tried to crawl away. "Rasha! Wait! It's Amy! How badly are you hurt?"

The girl only answered with a sudden lunge as she tried to make it to her feet to flee but stumbled from the pain ripping through her body when she moved. Amy caught her and pulled the phone out of her pocket to call for help but the girl grabbed her hand as she tried to dial. "Rasha! What are you doing? We need to get you to the hospital, to make sure that you are going to be OK!"

"No! You must never tell anyone about this! No one must ever know!"

"Why, Rasha? We need to get you some help!"

"You need to hide! They will be here soon!"

"Who? Who will be here?"

Another rattling came from the door at the side of the building and the women heard men's voices approaching.

"Hide! Now! I will be alright!" the young girl whispered firmly, "Hide, back there, _now_ , or neither of us will be!"

Terrified and unsure of what was happening, the would be rescuer started to argue, but at the last second dove behind the stack of hay at the petrified girl's insistence and buried herself quickly as the men approached.

"Pick up her things! I will take care of the girl!" a husky voice ordered.

There was rustling of feet and shuffling around the other side of the bales causing Rasha to whimper from the pain when one of the men scooped her from the floor and in a few seconds the door again clattered open followed by the creepy silence in the void of the dark building.

Amy gulped for air from having forgotten to breathe during the surreal incident and waited to crawl out from her hiding place, listening for noises and looking into the shadows for movement, but there was nothing. She had a sick feeling in her gut because she thought she should have done something, anything to help Rasha, but the girl's warning seemed to come from prior experience or knowledge so she had decided at the last instant to heed her friend's urgent plea to save herself.

Left alone in the haunting building, trying desperately to understand what the hell had just happened, nervous hands trembled as the gravity of the situation began to sink in and the distressed witness searched for the nerve to dial her driver to come and get her. Horrified and shivering, Amy finally let loose and broke down as she waited in the shocking stillness, deathly quiet as though nothing had even happened, not knowing if Rasha was yet another victim of whatever was happening to the girls on her crew, or who she could turn to for help.

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

A small kitten poked a paw through its cage and took a playful swipe as Ty passed it with a small box full of bedding he had prepared for a hamster at the end of the row. He stopped to stroke the tabby between its ears and listened to the loud purring as the affection deprived future mouser raised up to meet his hand. Against the kitten's protests he moved on down the row and announced, "Here ya go, Ollie!" to the hyper little patient who had eaten something he shouldn't have but the vet laughed at his antics when he took off hopping in random circles inside his cage when he thought he might get some food or attention.

It was five p.m. on Friday afternoon and the overworked new partner in the clinic was looking forward to a weekend off. He hadn't had one in months for thinking work was the only place he was safe from the torment of his memories and the perilous places his lack of resolve had taken him, but he was finally beginning to have a real appreciation for living again and was looking forward to making the most of his weekend.

After he had finished briefing Cassandra for her turn at the night shift Ty washed his hands and grabbed his motorcycle helmet from the table as he made his exit. He pushed through the door that separated the clinic and public areas and narrowly avoided running head long into a stunningly beautiful woman with shoulder length chestnut brown hair standing beside the receptionist's desk with a small clone of her standing shyly against her leg holding a booted kitten wrapped in her arms. He opened his mouth to speak but a couple false starts gave away his flabbergasted condition and the dark haired beauty smiled shyly at him through the bluest, most captivating eyes he had seen since…. He gave himself a mental reprimand for letting Amy slip into his thoughts like that. He'd thought he was farther along in distancing himself from the girl who ran his ship aground, "Uh, hello there! I'm sorry for almost running you over like that! I'm Dr. Borden, how can I help you?" he offered, humbled and feeling like the unprofessional jerk she must have thought he was considering the subtle amusement she reflected at his reaction to her.

"We need to get Sassy fixed!" the child announced with watchful eyes as presented her most prized possession to the stranger by lifting the kitten over her head for him to see it.

"I am so sorry! I know its late but my daughter came dragging in this little cat from our barn this afternoon and she has hurt her foot somehow, and since she just found her, I thought we had better make sure she is healthy and safe for me to let her come in the house. We need to make an appointment to get her spayed as well."

"You call her Sassy? Um,humm, I can see that is a good name!" he smiled as he leaned over and took the frightened little ball of fur into his arms and scratched under its chin with his index finger. He saw right away that the animal had been loved on enough to expect it and not a last minute acquisition as the mother had thought.

"She's scared of doctors!" the child spoke in defense of her feline charge, "I don't like 'em either, 'cause they stick me!"

"I won't stick you, I promise! But Sassy will need to get a couple of vaccinations to keep her from getting sick later, OK?" Ty reassured her and hoped to find a way to cure the pouty face.

"Okay," she mumbled, still not liking the idea.

"And, what is your name, young lady?" he asked the cautious child, thinking how cute she looked in her tiny pink trimmed coveralls and pony tail tied with a matching ribbon.

"My name is Samantha Christine Harris! But you're supposed to call me Sammy!" she exclaimed and stuck out a small hand to shake his in greeting. Ty laughed out loud at the businesslike manner of the child and gingerly accepted the offer by taking the eager hand in his and wondering, ' _Who is this kid_?' Confident behavior of young children was something he picked up on and admired knowing it was because parents made sure their kids knew they were loved, something he wished he could have experienced when he was growing up.

"Her great grandfather is a business man and she sees him do that when he greets a client. I'm her mother, Charlene, but please, call me Charlie," she smiled, waiting for it.

"So, let me get this straight, we have a mom called Charlie, who has a daughter named Sammy, who has a kitten named Sassy? Did I get all of that?" he asked with a slight grin at sensing the mother could take it.

"She named the cat. Takes one to know one!" Charlie said with a nod to her daughter's attitude and giving the doctor a hint for what to expect from the stubborn youngster when he dealt with his newest little client.

Ordinarily the vet would have sent his new clients to Cassandra to have her process the paperwork, given he was finished for the week and looking forward to a ride through the foothills before dark, but the self-assured little girl had won him over at first sight and he felt that he needed to personally get them settled in before he left. He opened the door to an examination room and showed them where to sit while they waited and he left them to find his assistant to do the prep work for a quick checkup and necessary vaccinations.

"I thought we were closed?" Cassandra asked, wondering what prompted his urgency and sidetracked his well-earned exit. "Oh…, Ahhhhh!" she sighed, flashing a teasing glance over her shoulder when she observed the pair sitting in the room through the small window in the door.

"Knock it off, Cass! It's just a kitten!"

"Yeah? More like a cute little girl needs a hero to save her sick little kitty with a smokin' hot mommy there watching the whole thing!" the instigator wagged an accusing finger in his face as she wrinkled her nose and nodded at her wise assessment of his sizable enthusiasm.

After Cassandra had finished the test they used to check for worms she brought the results back to the examination room and handed the paperwork to Ty who was seated between the patients' new caretakers fully absorbed in listening to the animated little girl tell him about all of the animals on her family's farm. He picked the purring striped kitten up from the table where Charlie had been scratching its ears and handed it back to the keen little girl and told her, "Well, Sammy, I think we are all set! I am going to give your mom a brochure to help you learn how to take care of Sassy and keep her healthy. We'll see you next week when you bring her back in to get her 'fixed', OK?"

"Thank you, Doctor Bor-den," she said, grinning from ear to ear.

He knelt down to the little girls' level so he could look straight into her identical blue eyes to her mother, "Tell you what, Sammy, why don't you just call me Ty? All of my friends do!"

Sammy nodded and felt special for having made such a cool new friend who knew how to make sick animals feel better and looked up to her mother to let her know she was anxious to get home with her new companion.

Charlie handed Cassandra a credit card and when the assistant left them to go to the front office and run it through the machine the appreciative woman looked at the vet and said, "Thank you, so much, Dr. Borden! I noticed you were on your way out the door when we came in and it was so kind of you to stay and help us!" she smiled and Ty saw that she meant what she said. "You have made a friend for life! I hope you know what you've started because she is a handful!"

"Not a problem! Glad we could help you get Sassy off to a good start. That is one lucky cat, I would say!" he laughed, and almost chickened out, "And, a pretty lucky little girl, too!"

Her cheeks reddened at the compliment but Charlie beamed when she nodded to show that his kind words were appreciated. Cassandra bumped through the door with the clipboard and smiled at the doctor when she thought she might have interrupted his moment and said, "OK, umm, is it Miss or Mrs.?"

"Oh, just put down Charlene. It's just me and the brat! But everybody calls me Charlie if you want to write that down to avoid confusion, for later," suggested.

"All righty then, Charlie! We have you scheduled for next Wednesday afternoon to bring in, uhh, Sassy, and she will need to be picked up on Friday afternoon after she has had a day to recover after the surgery." The assistant gave the client a professional smile and turned to wiggle her eyebrows again at the doctor before she stepped between the pair to have the woman to sign the paperwork. Charlie returned the clipboard and jabbed the card into her back pocket with the receipt and turned to leave, giving another smile and a wave when she went through the front door and said, and "See you next week!"

Ty looked at the night shift manager and anticipated her usual smart assed comments toward his extra efforts to please his newest client but she only smiled back at him, surprisingly sincere, for her, he thought, and he had to ask, "What?"

"Nothing! I'm just glad to see you back!"

"What do you mean by that?" he huffed.

"Dear boy, when are you ever going to get a clue? And just in case you were too dumbfounded to notice, Miss McCrary wasn't wearing a ring! _You're welcome_!" she chuckled, assuming due appreciation for scouting his possibilities with the beautiful new prospect.

"McCrary? Sammy called herself Harris?"

"Divorce, I would say. Either that or some son of a bitch named Harris knocked her up and ran off for parts unknown when the kid came along."

"Are you always this cynical about people?"

"Pretty much! I expect the worst so I won't be disappointed if things don't work out, and the odds are much better that someone will exceed my expectations if they turn out not to be a douchebag!"

"You should write a book about dating advice. That would be interesting!"

Cassandra patted his shoulder and flicked her hand to shoo him out the door, "Don't you have an old motorcycle waiting outside for someone to push it home, or something?"

* * *

After spending most of Saturday afternoon doing maintenance and washing both the classic truck and motorcycle the off duty vet felt like the time had come for some fun. He decided to ride up to one of his favorite picnic spots in the foothills and on the way though Hudson he stopped by Maggie's restaurant and feed store for a takeout sandwich to enjoy while he waited to watch the sunset alone. When he parked his vintage Norton in front of the restaurant's window that overlooked the street he noticed a head bobbing up and down near the bottom of it and recognized his newest client, Sammy, bouncing excitedly and pointing to everybody that her new friend was outside. As he opened the door the little girl was inside waiting to meet him and yelled, "It's Ty!", and without even thinking he reached down and scooped her up in his arms at which she rewarded him with a cheerful hug.

Charlie ran to the rescue of the ambushed hero, "Oh, Sammy!" embarrassed by the unbridled confidence of her daughter and reached for the child as she apologized, "I am so sorry! She has to learn that not just everybody wants to be bothered by a kid they don't even know!" To the doting girl she scolded, "Hey, kiddo, you can't just expect everybody to fuss over you whenever you want!"

"No, that's OK! Me and Sammy here are buddies, right Sammy?" he asked the grinning girl.

"Yup! He's my buddy Mommy! See!" and she smacked his cheek with a quick kiss.

Ty could see the flush in Charlie's cheeks and it surprised him at how he reveled at egging Sammy on to help push her mother into an awkward frazzle.

"You are enjoying this!" The mother's jaw dropped when she realized he was playing up to the girl to embarrass her for his own amusement.

"I kinda am!" he confessed with one of the few genuine laughs he had shared with anyone in months.

"Well, well, looks like the good doctor has a satisfied customer!" Lou chuckled as she leaned against the door of her restaurants' office. "Are all of your clients this happy with your work?"

"I wish! I might consider taking kisses as payment for fixing kittens from now on if this keeps up!"

Lou stuck out her hand to Charlie and introduced herself, "Lou Fleming-Morris, I own this little watering hole. I don't think I remember seeing you around here before."

"Hi! I'm Charlene McCrary, most people call me Charlie, and the brat here is Samantha. We call her Sammy. No, I have only been here a couple of times. I don't think you were here then. Sammy and I haven't lived here very long so we are still learning our way around Hudson. This is such a pretty area!"

"Exploring Hudson? That ought to keep you busy for maybe thirty minutes! It doesn't take long to tour our little town but there is a lot of beautiful countryside to see when you get the chance," she said to the newcomer. "Samantha is my first name too!" she told the girl and poked her belly causing her to squirm and giggle in Ty's arms. "Samantha Louise! And Ty here may as well be my little brother! We have known each other for a very long time!"

"That's so cool! I am really happy to finally get the chance to meet some people here! I have someone that I would like for you guys to meet!" Charlie motioned for them to follow her to the table in the corner.

"These are my grandparents, Clint and Margie McCrary."

"Clint McCrary? You don't by chance happen to have anything to do with promoting rodeos do you?"

"Used to!" the man smiled and answered. "I gave that up a couple of years ago. I'm gettin' too old to keep everybody in line anymore!"

"You may have run across my dad, Tim Fleming?"

"Tim! Hell yeah! He was one of the best out there for years until he got hurt at the Stampede. What's it been, twenty-odd years ago?"

"That's about right, twenty years!"

"I haven't heard from him since not long after he had to give up rodeoin'. How's he doin'?"

"He is much better, thank you! He has a ranch just west of here and he's as ornery as ever!"

"I'm glad you are the one who said it first! He was a tough one, all right!" the older man chuckled as he reminisced. "And this fella here," he asked his granddaughter, "this is the vet that you two have been going on about?"

"Grandpa! Thanks a lot! Yeah, that's him, but without the cape and Superman logo on his chest!" she aimed a playful poke back at the vet's chest.

"Sammy thinks you are the best thing since the tooth fairy that brought her five dollars last month!"

"Lou? Could you come here a minute?" one of the waitresses called for help.

"Five dollars? You need to introduce your tooth fairy to me! I got fifty cents!" Lou teased the girl. "Excuse me, folks, duty calls! Glad to meet you all! Let me know if you need anything!" she smiled at the guests and winked at Ty when she passed him.

Clint eyed the motorcycle in front of the restaurant, "That ol' Norton, how long you had it?"

"I restored that thing uh, about, five years ago, I think?"

"Restored it yourself?" Ty nodded that he had. "Me too! Got an old Triumph and a '65 Harley Electra Glide in my shed. The Harley is mint! Don't get to ride it much anymore though, you know, 'cause the old hen here puts her foot down if she gets a whiff that I might do something that even looks like fun!" he gruffed at his wife and flashed her a mischievous grin.

"Yeah, I've always been pretty good with mechanical things. I have to be or else I would be walking if I couldn't keep my old '57 GMC running!"

"Got a '55 Chevy back at the ranch myself! What I wanted to tell you about though, I bought an old Norton in pieces off a guy down by Vulcan. I think most of it is there but I could use somebody who knows what the hell they are lookin' at to see what might be missing. Would you mind coming by my place and looking it over sometime!"

"You bet! That would be awesome!" offered the thrilled enthusiast.

"Ty, why don't you join us, if you're not busy?" Margie asked. "Your arm must be about ready to fall off from holding my great grandbaby for so long!"

"Actually, I just thought I would stop by to get a sandwich and ride up to lover's leap to watch the sunset. I haven't done anything like that for way too long, so I thought I would fix that this evening!"

"That sounds so nice! Charlene used to _love_ to ride with her grandpa on that old motorcycle!" Margie spoke up when she saw her granddaughter's eyes light up at the conversation the men were having and gave the vet a leading glance.

Ty had a thought, almost decided against it, and then asked, "I see you haven't ordered yet, Charlie. Would you like to get a sandwich and ride up there with me? It seems like a waste of a good sunset to not share it with someone!"

"Oh, I, uh, couldn't! I have to get Sammy home and…,"

"Nonsense!" Margie huffed. "Your grandfather and I are perfectly capable of taking our sweet pea home and get her into bed when we are finished eating. Go, ahead! When is the last time you did something fun, for yourself?"

"Are you sure I wouldn't be imposing?"

Ty was amused at her shyness, "C'mon! Let's get Lou to whip us up a couple of her special subs and we'll hit the road!"

* * *

It was a twisting ride through the Kananaskis Country foothills but Ty made sure to take it easy in order to see how well Charlie handled riding behind him and to assure her that he knew how to handle the Norton.

Lover's Leap was vacant when they arrived and after the bike was shut off and the kick stand heeled into place Charlene dismounted and stretched, "Boy, I had almost forgotten how much fun it was to ride like that! You did a good job, by the way. I was impressed with how smooth you were with her!"

"Thanks! Over here, pick a spot and we can relax for a while. We have about twenty minutes before the show starts."

"Are you kidding me? The show has already started! Look at that view!"

"You've never been here before?"

"No. Sammy and I have only been at Grandpa's ranch for a few weeks."

"Where were you before that?"

Charlie's face went blank as she stared into the valley between the overlook and the Rockies and when Ty saw her hesitate to answer he said, "I'm sorry if I am being too nosey. I understand if you don't feel like sharing personal things like this right off the bat. Just tell me if I ask too many questions."

"No, it's not that! I just don't want to start dumping my sad story on you before we have even eaten our first sandwich together!"

Although he was very rusty at humor Ty thought he would give a try to lighten the mood, "Well, I _have_ kissed your daughter, if you remember, so, _she_ thinks I'm trustworthy, and everybody knows you can't fool a kid!"

Charlie cackled at his gesture and gave him a look to let him know she felt more at ease in his company.

"Yeah, you've got a fan right there! She wouldn't shut up about her 'new friend Ty!' Other than her grandpa, she isn't used to having a male adult paying so much attention to her and being nice."

Wanting to ask about Sammy's father but deciding not to push his luck, "She is something else! I don't see how anybody could look at that little girl and not just bust out smiling. She is so full of life! A kid that is so outgoing and sure of themselves shows me that she knows she is loved. I would know, I was just the opposite!"

"That's too bad," she tried to understand how Ty could turn out so well if what he said was true.

Charlie laid out the small plastic table cloth on the ground and took the sandwiches out of the backpack that Ty had strapped to her for carrying the picnic dinner with them. She never hesitated to unfold the wrappers of both of their meals, lay out the napkins and chips, open the drinks, and when she had finished, looked up to let him know that the meal was ready. She noticed the look on her dining companion's face and asked, "What?"

"Only a mother could take charge and prepare everything like that. You did the whole thing without a second thought."

"Oh, I'm sorry if I…," afraid that she had insulted him in some way.

"No, I just admire the way you think of others so easily."

She blushed at his compliment and said, "Thank you, for all of this! You have been so nice to me and my family the last couple of days. It goes without saying what Sammy thinks of our new vet, and you won grandpa over talking about your old trucks and motorcycles, but grandma, she is the tough one! Don't let her quiet demeanor fool you. I think you won her over too, and that is hard to do, especially in, what, ten minutes!"

"What can I say? I'm just a loveable kind of guy!"

For the first time since they had been alone Charlie gathered the courage to take a long look into those dangerously alluring green eyes reflecting the orange sunset's finish to of one of the best days either of them had experienced in ages. The couple enjoyed Lou's sandwiches, made small talk, and watched the sun disappear behind granite faces separating night from day, and a flurry of butterflies unleashed themselves in Charlie's stomach when Ty leaned in, slow and careful to test her boundaries, and placed a warm, gentle first kiss on her lips. Her fingers brushed his neck and curled into his hair to let him know he had passed her test with the highest marks.

Ty let the kiss linger because it felt so good to be close to this mysterious woman who seemed to get who he was and what he was about. He slowly pulled away and said, "I hope you aren't disappointed in me for doing that. I know it is probably too soon but...,"

Before he could finish his appeal for forgiveness Charlene used her clinched fingers still entwined in his hair to draw him back to her and repeated the kiss. She took her turn to slowly pull back, "I hope you don't think I accepted the kiss too soon, I don't generally go around locking lips with guys I have only known for a day, but I'm pretty sure that you are a decent guy, and damn, that felt good!"

"If I asked you to go out to dinner with me next weekend, would you think about it?"

"I was actually thinking about asking you to dinner with us at Grandpa's ranch! You could look at his toys and Sammy would love to show all of her pets to you. Maybe, if you are really nice, we could take a trail ride to the back side of the ranch. It is a beautiful ride!"

"Are you sure it would be OK with them?"

"My grandmother would be disappointed in me if I didn't ask! She likes you!"

"OK! But only on one condition. You can't call our old trucks and motorcycles toys, ever again!"

"Shut up and kiss me again before I change my mind!"

 _To be continued_


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A knock on the door caused Ahmed to flinch in the quiet wee hour of the morning. He looked up to discover Amy's troubled expression as she anxiously waited outside his office while he finished his conversation on the phone. He glanced at his watch, twelve fifteen a.m., and her look startled him because this was very unlike the woman that he knew to have a habit of turning in early. He shuffled a few papers to put them in his briefcase and asked, "Amy! Come! What are you doing up this late?"

"I need to talk to you, Ahmed! Something terrible has happened and I need to find someone who can help because I don't know what to do!"

"What has happened?" he asked, alarmed with her urgency. "Are you alright?"

"It's not me, it's Rasha! I saw her attacked just a while ago by a man she was with and he just left her there and in just a few minutes two men came and took her away! We need to find her!"

"Amy, where were you when you saw this happen?"

"I was in the arena! After you left I talked to the driver and told him not to come and pick me up for about an hour because I wanted to be alone…, to think about some things."

"You were all alone, with no one there to protect you?"

"Yes! I had been there for a while and everything was fine until Rasha came in with that man. It was dark and I couldn't see them, and they couldn't see me, and they went into one of the stalls and started having, uh, they were together!"

"You mean, having sex? And you didn't see the man?"

"No! It was almost completely dark!"

"They were there together? No one was forced?"

"Not in the beginning. Everything was normal, I guess, until they had almost finished, and that's when the man started to hurt Rasha and left her laying on the floor when he left. I went to her to see if she needed help and she was beaten up pretty badly! That's when I realized that I knew her and I tried to get her to let me take her to the hospital but she wouldn't go, and when the two men came to take her away she begged for me to hide, so I did!"

"These men, they didn't they see you?"

"I was hidden so they didn't know I was there!" she explained.

"Rasha did not tell you anything else?"

"No! She was scared to death and she seemed to be afraid for me as well. She said she would be OK but if the men saw me that it would be bad for both of us! That's why I hid!"

"You did not see the two men, what they looked like?"

"No, I never saw their faces."

"It is good that you did not try to confront these men! I cannot think what I would have done if something had happened to you!"

Amy pleaded, "What can we do to find Rasha? She is out there somewhere, she's hurt, and we need to find her!"

"Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"

"No, not yet! It just happened about an hour ago! I came straight to you when I felt like it was safe to leave."

"Good! I will call my security staff immediately! Let me handle this, Amy! You must not say anything to anyone else! It is for your safety!"

Confused at the prince's response, "Why? Shouldn't we at least let everyone else on the team know? Especially the women! They need to know that they could be in danger! Maybe someone knows something that will help to find her!"

"My security people will take care of that! This is a very sensitive issue, Amy! Too much information in the wrong hands could be extremely harmful to all of us on this team, and to my country, do you understand? This is larger than it appears to be! You must let me and my security staff resolve this matter, in our own way!"

"OK? I won't say anything then, I guess?"

"Good! I will let you know when we find any information," he assured his worried head trainer.

Amy went to her hotel room and curled up on the sofa not even bothering to get dressed for bed. She huddled in the dark and tried to sort everything she had witnessed into making sense. ' _Why was Rasha there with the man alone? Well, she knew why, but what went wrong? She was obviously enjoying the tryst until her partner went crazy when he finished. What the hell was the matter with him? Did she do something to upset him? That didn't seem likely considering the satisfied moans from both of them coming from the shadows. Rasha had to have known this guy, right? She must have trusted him? Where would they have taken her, and why were the two men there in the first place?'_

Exhaustion caused scattered thoughts to ramble in all directions until she finally dosed away on the sofa, confused, worried, helpless, and afraid for her friends.

* * *

Twelve days had gone by with no new information about either of the two missing women. Tension emanated from the team members, especially the women, and Amy was shocked at how no one would even mention what had happened, almost in denial that something even had. She learned from one of her female grooms that each of them had been instructed not to speak of either of the incidents, even in private, There was no outpouring of compassion that she had expected from them considering the likelihood that Aleah and Rasha could be in dire trouble, if not worse, and it upset her that their circumstances were being kept so quiet.

A few people remained at the stables to finish getting the thoroughbreds settled in for the night and cleaning up any messes they had caused. Amy held her briefcase in her hand and looked around inside the massive building to help her remember just how big of a deal her job really was.

"Amy! I am happy to have found you before you leave tomorrow!" Ahmed trotted from outside the gate to catch her leaving the arena for the last time before going to the hotel to pack for her journey home.

In no mood for socializing and at odds with some of the riders over their lackluster performances and unyielding attitudes of late, the exhausted trainer had kept to herself since the unsolved incident with Rasha.

"I have not gotten a response to my e-mails or texts as to your accepting my offer to come back to Europe and oversee my team into the Games!" he reminded her.

"I need to talk to you about that. Thank you for considering me for the position, Ahmed, but I have decided to stay in Alberta and continue my own business. I have a lot healing to do with some people that I care very much about and I need to see what is left of my life so I can start over when I get there."

The prince continued to promote his request as he matched her strides while she continued to walk away, "You must not let emotions take you away from such an important opportunity, Amy! This could take you into a level of business that you have never imagined! You would be leaving behind the kind of life that few will ever live, for what, Amy, working from daylight to dark just to keep food on the table? You deserve more, and you will have everything you could ever need if you return as my team manager!"

"I have made up my mind, Ahmed, I am going home," she finished.

Ahmed followed her through the door, "Take some time to think about it, Amy, you must not be too hasty with a decision like this!" and he watched her enter the limousine and give a quick wave before the security guard closed the door and the car drove away.

* * *

Mounting pressures needing to be resolved had left her nearly incapable of handling her responsibilities to the team or anything else that had become her daily routine. She even stayed at the hotel for two days this past week before departing Europe taking care of some personal business and reflecting on her first extended time away from home and how different her life was than before she left Alberta four months ago.

Anticipation of the trip back to her home and family grew with each drawer opened and closet cleaned as Amy searched for stray belongings. She looked under the bed for misplaced shoes and emptied the suites private safe of her passport and valuables she had brought with her. It was time for the perplexed woman to evaluate her time away from home and she attempted to tally up some sort of scale in her head weighing the pros and cons of the trip in order to have some idea if she had gained or lost from the time when this "Job of a Lifetime" started.

On the up side was the well-padded bank account she still couldn't believe when she looked at the balance at the bottom of the statement. In the five months she had worked for Ahmed she had socked away more money than she had planned to earn in four years at her old rates. There were many introductions to possible contacts she hoped to use in her future business of training higher performance horses than she previously worked with at Heartland and now she had the finances for a good startup.

On the down side, her business was intended to include her future husband as a partner and that was now looking like a lost cause.

On the up side, she had traveled to some of the most exotic places in Europe, stayed in the best hotels, eaten the best food, and seen the most beautiful sights, things she could never have dreamed of before the trip. Everyone of importance in competitive big league equestrian circles knew her name and she liked the clout she had built up along with a sense of pride that she had never before experienced after stepping up to the challenge and winning against the best the world had to offer.

On the down side, all of these exciting things had cost her everyone she counted on for security and contentment in a simpler way of life. Besides losing her fiancé she had strained the relationships with Lou and her grandfather. It was understandable for them to be upset with her for sending Ty home like she did but she was puzzled by the severity of their reaction and cool reception the few times she did manage to call before she finally gave up completely. No communication meant there was no reason to think anything was going to be better for any of them until she got home and tended to the separation and the damage it had caused.

Amy's emotions were a rollercoaster of ups and downs with no way for her to gauge where she was on the ride. Everything that was good had a counter effect that took away from the quality of her life and the longer she stayed away from home the less sure she was about anything. Not seeing family or old friends every day had taught her that she could be independent and able to survive on her own but she could not ignore a very real loneliness that would not go away because there was no one she had a history with to share in her success or help to shoulder some of the weight of her disappointments. Losing her family was more than she was willing to give up, for anything.

* * *

A long flight with hardly any sleep caused Amy's tired body to shiver easily at the cooler temperatures when she walked through the revolving doors at the airport in Calgary. A cab waited to take her for another hour long ride into the country and for the first time _she_ would be the long lost family member returning home to Heartland after being gone long enough to possibly have been forgotten.

An ominous stirring in her stomach threatened the world traveler's half-digested lunch and the elevated strain from mixed feelings about being home brought the anxiety she tried to bury higher to the surface with every kilometer they drove into the foothills. Amy was tired and her thoughts were running together as the cab turned under the Heartland sign that had hung from the entrance gate to the ranch for generations of her ancestors. Amy's heart woke up and pumped her mind back into a fuzzy awareness of her surroundings when the driver stopped in the circular driveway in front of the house and hopped out of the car to open the trunk and retrieve the only two suitcases she brought with her. Experience taught her to send the remaining luggage via a major freight carrier because it was a lot less expensive than the airlines fares and the packages were much more likely to make it home in one piece.

As the yellow cab pulled away she circled where she stood and looked around the yard to the barn and outbuildings and was shocked at how undersized and run down everything looked. The venues she had been working in since she left home were nothing like this. Everything there was painted and trimmed and having become accustomed to everything being done to perfection this was a mental setback to her. "Going to have to get this place cleaned up before any of my new clients see it like this!" she muttered and began to walk to the house.

It was a little disappointing that the entire family wasn't already out on the porch waiting for her. She had left a message both yesterday and again after she had landed today that she was on her way home but it seemed like nobody had gotten the messages she left on the answering machine. Just then she heard an excited child's voice, "Aunt Amy!" and saw Katie running as fast as she could from the barn toward her. The four year old launched into the traveler's tired arms with Lou and Georgie trotting behind her across the driveway.

"Well, well, look who it is! We thought maybe you forgot how to get here and had gotten lost on the way!" Lou laughed and gave the stranger a long hug before taking Katie out of her obviously weary arms as her younger sister struggled to hold her up.

"She's grown like a weed! I can't believe how big she's gotten!"

"Yeah, she's half grown already, it seems!" Lou agreed.

Amy noticed her surprisingly standoffish niece and said, "Hey, Georgie! Look at you! You've grown a _foot_ yourself! And, you look different! You don't look like the kid I remember, you look grown up!" referring to her not so childish shape.

"Thanks, I think?" Georgie replied.

"I just mean that we had better get ready for the guys to start coming around, you know, wanting to help you ride the horses, and stuff!" she smiled at trying to tease Georgie into a more pleasant reaction, but failed.

"Oh, you're too late for that! We have a regular guest these days, his name is Steven!" Lou chimed in.

"Stop it, Mom! He's just a friend!"

Amy was pleased that Georgie referred to Lou as her mother, something she knew was troubling to Lou when her adopted daughter called her by her first name instead.

"Let's get you inside!" Lou suggested and picked up one of the suitcases. "I can tell that you are exhausted! Georgie, would you get the other bag for her, please?"

Amy couldn't take her eyes off the ranch house as she neared it. It was almost like they were strangers, the house and her, because so much had happened since the last time she walked across the threshold and she feared the house would see her as a different person, and maybe she was.

"Does it feel good to be home?" Lou asked at seeing the apprehension coming from her sister. "You must be too tired to feel much of anything right now. Why don't you freshen up a bit and I will fix you something to eat. I am going to have to run to the store to get some things for breakfast tomorrow morning because I am expecting a big crowd to celebrate your homecoming."

"Why don't you let me go to the store for you, Lou? I haven't driven anywhere since I left home and I wouldn't mind going to the store for you to help me wind down from the flight home. Just give me a list of the things you need and I will pick them up for you, my treat!"

"You sure? You look exhausted!"

"Yeah, a drive would be nice. I'd like to do it."

Amy glanced from side to side as she drove slower than usual up the winding driveway and reacquainted herself with the strangely unfamiliar landscape of the ranch that she grew up on. When she reached the top of the hill she paused and decided to take the long way around to the store and spend a few extra minutes exploring her old stomping ground.

As she approached the turn before Ty's old trailer she slowed to see if anyone was home because she wasn't sure she was ready to be seen. He still hadn't answered her calls or texts and she wanted to make sure there would be enough time when she finally saw him to make the exchange between them count, but upon seeing the "For Rent" sign hanging from the closed gate it was apparent that no one had lived there for quite some time.

Sadness filled Amy with the gripping reality of knowing everything she loved about the life she left behind only a few short months ago being so dramatically changed. She was shaken to be made so frighteningly aware that everything which was so important to her before as being nonexistent, almost like the story of her life had been someone else's dream and she had come to a place and time where she was the outsider and knew little or nothing about the people who lived here.

* * *

Ty was enjoying the wind his face and the pleasure of being on the open road as the late evening sun hovered just above the Rockies ready to descend behind the gray peaks to reveal another clear starlit night. The rider figured he had better make a swing through Turner Valley and head back toward town if he wanted to make it to Okotoks before nightfall and try to get to the restaurant for something to eat before it closed. He was glad the Alberta days were so long in the summer. It gave him the opportunity to get a good ride in after a long day at the clinic and he made the most of times like this to recapture his spirit that had almost gotten away from him.

The rider approached the intersection near the old store in Millarville and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Jack's old Chevy truck in the parking lot. When he saw her his heart stopped beating, his mind went to numb, and he hoped he could at least make it out of sight before he had to stop and heave the last of his lunch on the shoulder of the road.

"Dammit!" he cursed out loud. These past two weeks were the best he had enjoyed in months and she just ruined the serenity of his evening ride without even knowing she had done it.

When he stopped the Norton at the crossroads on the edge of the city limits he thought about going into town for a burger since he now had an empty stomach, but tonight he didn't have it in him and turned toward Calgary and the empty house waiting to torture him with its lacking opulence and echoes. He arrived after sunset and went inside the house, took a shower, and went to bed without bothering to get anything to eat because he had lost the appetite for it.

Ty went to bed early only to toss and turn for hours but sleep would not come. Amy was back in Hudson and he clearly was less prepared for her arrival than he had hoped.

* * *

Amy took the sack of groceries she had volunteered to pick up for Lou and put them in the passenger floorboard in front of the seat to keep them from spilling over. Thankfully, the old couple that ran the store didn't seem to know anything about the reasons for her return to the ranch, in fact, she wasn't sure they even realized that she had been gone for almost half the year. ' _If everybody else is as clueless about my being single again as those two, that would be great_ ,' she thought.

After placing the bags on the kitchen counter beside her busy sister Amy said, "Well, now we should have everything we need for a big breakfast tomorrow morning."

Lou nodded and pinched her lips into a tight, less than welcoming smile and replied, "Thanks. Yeah, Dad will be coming over with his new girlfriend, Casey. You haven't met her but she's a sweetheart, and Dad doesn't even come close to deserving her."

"Yeah, I get it, I guess that runs in the family," she alluded to her situation and the mess she had made of the wedding that didn't happen, the one that Lou had spent untold hours trying to prepare for.

Lou snapped her head up and gave a glance that told Amy the pressure of their personal rift was about to come to a head, but she opted to bite her lip and went back to work putting away the meats and vegetables she would use to make Texas Omelets for breakfast.

"I never did get a chance to apologize for that, the wedding, I mean," Amy offered an olive branch in peace.

Lou had been trying to think of what she would say to her sister when she finally came home, if she ever did. Try as she might, all of the plans she had made to ease into it went right out the window, "Amy! What, the, hell, were you thinking?" her eyes enraged and unblinking. "Do you have any idea how badly you hurt Ty?"

Surprised by the sudden flare-up, Amy stammered, unable to propose a response.

"Well, do you? And never mind about the rest of us having to make excuses for all the questions from all of your friends and clients, hell, from everybody that we invited to the wedding! I am _still_ returning wedding gifts with apology notes for the misunderstanding!"

Amy pleaded, "I'm sorry, Lou! I know things are really screwed up right now but I intend to try and fix them as soon as I can, I promise! That's why I came home, to see if I can fix things!"

The perceptive sister looked closer at her younger sibling and thought she had lost weight and looked alarmingly meek in her eyes causing her to abridge her assault, "I am sorry for coming down on you like that so soon, Amy, but I am completely at a loss with how you could do that to us…., to _him_!"

"It's just…, everything got so busy just before Ty came to see me and having him come when he did couldn't have been at a worse time and…,"

"Let me guess," Lou was resolute with her interruption, "when Ahmed learned that Ty was coming to see you, you were besieged with unexpected problems that needed to be taken care of as soon as possible? They couldn't wait or else the world as we know it would have come to an end?"

"I had only been there for two months and I was still learning how to do my job and I made a few mistakes and….,"

"Just stop it, Amy! If you aren't smart enough to figure out what happened to you and Ty over there, well, maybe you deserve what you got! I warned you and you obviously didn't listen!" Lou snapped, then regretted her words before she even had a chance to breathe.

"I don't think I want anything to eat, Lou. I just want to go to bed," Amy murmured, defeated by her guilt and hurtful accusations from the person whose love and support she so desperately needed. The disconcerted woman wished she had something to tell her sister to make her understand her side of the situation but gave up in an exasperated huff and stomped to her bedroom and slammed the door shut behind her.

The girls' grandfather came out from his bathroom wiping soap from his face after freshening up to meet his long absent granddaughter and looked around to see what brought on all the commotion, but when he saw the look on Lou's face Jack shook his head and went back into his room without saying a word.

* * *

Breakfast was less organized than usual because Tim and Casey were ten minutes late and Katie was so wound up at Amy being home that Lou could not get her into the dining area to sit at the table. When they all finally gathered and took their places questions about working with rich people and fancy places that Amy had visited were bounced from one family member to another and kept her busy enough answering them to avoid facing her sister's cold shoulder.

"So, I guess things are going well with Ahmed!" Tim started.

"Well enough, I guess," his youngest daughter tried to move on from any mention of the prince.

"You don't sound very excited for someone who just came home from the adventure of a lifetime, and a successful one at that!"

When she didn't reply, Tim realized he had forgotten about the wedding debacle and hitched his shoulders in apology, "I'm sorry, Honey! I know it's going to take some time to get used to being single again, but hey, it could be worse, right? Just think, Ahmed is wrapped around your little finger and any time you are read…,"

"DAD! Will you just _shut up_?" Lou barked unexpectedly.

"What the hell was that?" he countered.

"I don't want to hear another word about that damned prince! And the next word about him from _YOU_ is going to get your breakfast thrown out the door after you!"

Amy's jaw dropped at Lou's outburst. She had expected her sister to blame Ahmed for the breakup, especially after all of her warnings, but she was shocked at how vehemently Lou had reacted to the mention of the prince's name and threw her napkin in her plate and shot out the door. Lou simmered indignantly for a moment until she did the same in answer to her sister's theatrics and left the others bewildered at mid meal as the door slammed for the second time in less than sixty seconds.

"Tell me, there's more to the story, right?" asked the uninformed father of his feuding daughters.

"You have no idea!" Jack finally spoke up. "It would be better to let Lou cool off a bit, then you two can have a long talk about it. As for Amy, I think we all need to hear her side of this, and she will let us know when she's ready."

Casey sat still, having no inkling of what to say or do, and when Georgie saw her horrified expression, "Don't worry! It's not like this _every_ day!"

* * *

Lou found Amy holding Spartan's muzzle in her hands, heartbroken and crying irrepressibly. She stood still for a moment before attempting to approach her and realized that the detached woman was more aware of the fallout from her actions than she first thought and regretted making her feel more estranged than she already was. Without trying for useless words, Lou walked up from behind and smothered her baby sister with an embrace to assure the anguished loved one that she was still loved and whatever rift they were experiencing now would be worked out, eventually.

"I have made everyone hate me!"

"No, Amy, we could never hate you!" Lou hugged her again and said, "Come into the office with me, please! We can talk about this and I have some things to share with you that might explain our side of what is going on here because you are clearly unaware of why we are as upset as we are."

Amy was more confused than before, but followed her sister's grip on her hand into the office and sat in the chair in front of her mother's old desk.

Lou stood on her tip toes and reached above a tight spot in one of the highest shelves behind her chair. A piece of paper dangled in her fingers and she walked to a picture of their mother and swung it away from the wall to reveal a safe that wasn't there before. "I haven't learned the code yet," she explained, and pushed in a series of numbers to unlock it.

Amy's eyes grew wide when Lou reached inside and pulled a pistol from the safe and sat it on the desk between them. "Lou, what are you doing? When did you get that? Why do you have a gun?"

"It isn't mine, Amy, it was Ty's!"

 _To be continued_


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Amy froze in her chair as she stared at the intimidating weapon ominously posturing itself as if it was waiting to tell more of a story than she had been prepared for. Lou sat behind their mother's old desk and sniffled at fighting for enough composure to explain why she had the pistol and tried to think of where to begin. "This part of the story started the day you and I argued on the phone. Before then I had it figured that Ty may have overreacted to your being busy when he went to visit you and maybe got his feelings hurt because you didn't have as much time to spend with him as he would have liked. I assumed you two would feel bad about losing your tempers and work it out like you always do. But with the way you talked to me, Amy, so callous and uncaring, and the way you hung up on me like you did, it made me think that if you were as insensitive to him as you were when we talked that he must have been devastated, so, I thought I should call the clinic to see if I could talk to him. Scott said he called in sick the afternoon before so I decided to go check on him because I hadn't seen him in a while and that is when I found out that he had moved to Calgary. I just had a feeling in my gut that told me I needed to find him and Scott told me where he lived." Lou paused and looked at the weapon, "When I got there I thought I was already too late!"

Motionless and emotionally drained, Amy's mind reeled with visions of the man who she knew to love her more than anyone else being so despondent because of her and her chest ached with guilt-ridden disbelief as Lou explained the circumstances of Ty's depression.

"Nobody answered the door when I knocked repeatedly and when I looked through the window I could see him in a chair in the living room. He wasn't moving…, and the harder I pounded the door and he didn't respond…, I thought he was…," Lou dropped her face into her hands and began to shudder with the fear that returned when the vivid memory came back to haunt her.

"I happened to try the door to see if it was locked, but it wasn't, and when I got to him I was hysterical and screaming my head off and that's what caused him to finally wake up. I never was so glad to see anybody shitfaced drunk before, but considering what I thought had happened…,"

"I am so sorry, Lou! I never thought in a million years that he would have reacted like that!" faltered the stunned woman. "I would never forgive myself if…,"

"Turns out he wasn't in as bad of a shape as we first thought, thank God!" Lou continued to fill her sister in with details of the aftermath, about sending him to stay at Fairfield with Lisa and their grandfather to watch over him until they felt satisfied that he was safe, and about Dr. Barbara Bilson who had been a great help with the private counseling that Lisa had set up for him. She shared what the Dr. told them, that they all over reacted to Ty's condition, and that he really didn't want to hurt himself, but staying on the side of caution was safer than the alternative.

After listening to Lou's account of the close call she choked back new tears and asked, "Is he really going to be OK, Lou? I never dreamed he would take it like this! I have to go see him!"

Lou held up her hands in rejection and said, "No, Amy, I don't think that is a good idea!"

"But that is why I came back, Lou! I know I hurt him and I want to see if I can find a way to get him to forgive me! I love him, Lou, I know more than ever that I love him, and I want him back!"

"OK, maybe you do, but what do you think Ty wants? Do you ever think about that?"

"How can I know that if I don't ask him?"

Playing mediator between separated loved ones is always a difficult spot to be in but Lou did want to see both of them happy and she had always admired the innocent young love they shared while growing up together. "I won't try to stop you, if that's what you want to do, Amy, but you had damn well better be sure this time! I love you, but if you willfully hurt him again I will never again think of you in the same way."

"I won't, Lou! I love him and I will do everything I can to show him, and all of you who doubt me, that I am serious about us and committed to our relationship."

* * *

When she stopped her grandfather's pickup truck in a space near the entrance of the clinic Amy paused to look at the new sign hanging on the wall of the building. "Hudson Veterinary Clinic, Dr. Scott Cardinal, and Dr. Ty Borden." She read the words out loud and smiled, astonished at yet another reminder of how much things had changed since she left, just before her heart plunged when she realized that she had missed Ty's hard earned graduation and his signing on as Scotts partner in the business. Her brow knitted in frustration and she muttered, "Crap! Crap! Crap! How could I have forgotten about that?"

The waiting area was empty except for a small child, about four or five years old, she supposed, who sat in one of the chairs and looked at the pictures in a book of horses that she recognized as one of the gifts she had given to Ty for Christmas. "Hey!" Amy cautiously greeted the little girl, "What 'cha doin' out here all by yourself?"

"My mom had to go to the doctor's office. I _hate_ that place! Ty said it would be OK to wait here. He gave me this book! Look!" She held it up proudly for Amy to see.

"That sure is a nice book, uh, I'm sorry, I don't know your name?"

"My name is Samantha Christine Harris, but you're supposed to call me Sammy! What's yours?"

"Well, hello, Sammy! I'm Amy! So, you know T…, Dr. Borden?" wondering what the connection was, but thought she might have an idea.

"He said _I_ can call him Ty 'cause _we're_ friends! He's doin' a checkup on Sassy!"

"Sassy? Is that your pet's name?"

"Yeah, she's my kitty! She got fixed and Ty needs to make sure she stayed sewed up and stuff."

Amy chuckled, ' _Such a beautiful little girl! And smart too!_ ' she thought.

While she was picturing how Ty had come to know the child a shapely dark haired woman dressed in a new pair of well-fitting jeans and a pink T-shirt that read "Momster: What happens to Mommy after she counts to three!" strode into the lobby and called to Amy's companion, "C'mon, Sam! Let's go see if Ty is finished with Sassy!" As the little girl wiggled out of the chair the girl's mother noticed Amy being held captive in the seat beside her sociable daughter and said apologetically, "I hope she wasn't being a pest!" and Amy noticed the pretty cowgirl as she opened the swinging door to the clinic like she once did any time she visited her fiancé, like the woman had gotten to know her way around, and held it for her daughter to come bouncing along with her while she clung tightly to her new book.

"No! She wasn't bothering me at all! In fact, we were having a nice conversation!"

The mother smiled politely and said, "Yeah? Just be careful! Gabby gums here can talk the devil out of his last quarter! I've seen her do it!" And laughed as they passed out of sight.

A new receptionist that Amy had never seen before asked, "Hello, may I help you?"

"No, not really. I'm just here waiting to see if I can speak with Ty, uhh, Dr. Borden."

"I'm afraid we are getting ready to close, dear! Do you need me to page him for you?"

"No, that's OK! I will just wait until he isn't busy and catch him before he leaves."

"I will let him know you're out here wai…, never mind! Here he comes now!"

Ty came through facing the receptionist's desk and pushed the door open for the mother who was holding the book and her daughter wrapping a booted kitten in her arms whose head was bobbing up and down with the exaggerated gait of the small child's steps as she tried to keep up.

"Thank you for the book! She loves it!"

"You're quite welcome! I was finished with it anyway," he replied.

"Whaddya say Sam?"

"Thank you for the book, and for fixing Sassy, too!" she smiled up to him and it made him crouch down beside her, "You bet, Sammy! Now, take it easy on her for a while! Sassy isn't going to feel like playing for a day or two so you have to be careful with her, OK?"

She nodded back in answer, "I'll make sure Mommy leaves her alone!" which made him laugh.

"You got that Mom? Don't be messing with Sassy! Sammy's orders!"

"Got it!" she beamed proudly at her daughter and chuckled while she waited for Ty to raise back up and pressed her fingers of her free hand against his chest, "See you tomorrow afternoon. Come hungry! Grandma has a big meal planned and you do _not_ want to miss out on what she can do when she wants to show off her skills in the kitchen!"

"I can't wait! Tell Clint I got him a manual that will definitely help him with his Norton project."

"I will! He will be thrilled! Gotta go, Sam! You have chores to do before dinner!"

"You are working this kid too hard, you know," he said with a grin.

"Yeah?" Well, you'll have a chance to see how hard it is to get her wound down enough to get her into bed tomorrow evening, then you can get back to me on that!"

When they all turned to walk out the door the woman smiled at Amy as she passed and Sammy smiled and waved as she followed, and Ty rolled back on his heals like he had walked into a brick wall.

"Amy! What are you doing here?" he asked, clearly startled at seeing her.

"I hope it's OK that I'm here. Can you take a little time to talk?"

"Yeah! I guess so?" he eyed her warily as he tried to refocus on where they should go to talk in private, and the seldom seen woman dangled a key on a string from her finger.

"Why don't we go out to your old trailer? I stopped by the rodeo grounds and got the key from Caleb, he said it would be OK. I have some things I want to say and I think that is the best place to say them," hoping the many good memories they shared at his first place on his own would help her cause.

"Are you sure, Amy, I mean….,"

"Yes, Ty," she steered away from being dismissed, "I really need to set things right between us. Please, meet me there and let's talk, OK?"

"It will be about thirty minutes before I can leave. Cass has something going and she is going to be a little late for her shift," he explained.

"That's fine! I will stop by and get us something to eat and see you when you get there!" she tried not to show her relief, but smiled broadly in spite of her best effort to play it cool.

Amy left and Ty watched her through the window as she drove away. ' _I wonder what she is up to. She can't be serious if she thinks she can waltz back in here and bat those big blue eyes at me like she used to and make it all better_!'

Cassandra arrived to take her shift for the evening and as they were going over some files a man walked through the back door and presented a package. "Ty Borden?"

"Yes, I'm Ty Borden, what can I do for you?"

"This is for you!" he said as he handed over the small box and immediately walked away.

"Hey, don't I need to sign for this?"

The man kept walking without even turning to acknowledge the question and left Ty and Cassandra staring at the plain box thinking how unusual the delivery was.

Setting the box on his desk, Ty opened the top drawer to find a box cutter and he slit the tape on the seam to flip open the lid. He strained to read a note that was on top of the fabric inside and Cassandra asked, "What the hell is in there?" when she saw the color leave his face.

"Nothing! It must be a mistake! I gotta go!" and picked up the package and pushed through the door.

* * *

Amy dusted the sofa on the front porch as well as she could manage with what she could find inside the trailer and pulled up the table from the other end of the enclosure to make a place to set their meal until Ty arrived. She had been waiting long enough for the food to start to get cold and tested the microwave to see if it still worked. She heated up the meal when she heard Ty's Norton coming up the road and tried to flush the butterflies out of her stomach with a few deep breaths.

"Just like old times, eh?" she smiled, trying to take the edge away for both of them, but soon realized her ex wasn't buying the easy way into a conversation.

"I cleaned the old couch up as best I could, so go ahead and sit! I'll bring your dinner to you. I just warmed it up a little."

"Thanks."

Amy handed him his favorite Mexican dish from the Saskatoon Farm's menu in Hudson and they opened up the boxes to dig into their meal.

"You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find food like this in, Europe," she hesitated, realizing that she shouldn't have made any reference to her time away so soon. When he didn't reply, "I missed being home. Things like this are not something a girl can do without!"

"Five star restaurants don't cut it anymore?" he said flatly.

"They are nice, for a while, but there's only so much Croque-monsieur a girl can eat. That's a twenty five dollar ham sandwich, in Paris. Lou's is better and it's still seven bucks! It's the closest thing I could find to make me think of Maggie's!" she tried again, still no response.

The repentant former fiancée decided to give the conversation a break for long enough to finish their dinner because she figured she might be more effective in breaking the ice without food in her mouth and she clearly needed a new strategy.

Amy's mind was working hard to come up with a way to open the conversation that she had been anxiously planning for weeks and she stalled for time by picking up the boxes and taking them to Jack's truck so she could dispose of them later. "I can see that you are doubtful that I can say anything you want to hear, so, I'll just try to tell you what I am feeling and we can go from there, OK?"

Ty only nodded for her to proceed.

"I know what I did was, I can't even think of a word for it, maybe, unforgivable, but that is what I want to talk to you about, Ty. I want to say that I am sorry, sorrier than I know how to tell you that I behaved the way I did and ruined your trip to France."

"Ruined my trip? I could care less about the trip!"

Trying not to let the civil mood get away, "I know! That was a stupid thing to say! I'm just scared, Ty! I never could say things the way I wanted to when I was scared, you know that, and I'm scared now! I'm scared of losing the only one who always got me, always knew what I needed even before I knew myself. I want to tell you that I still love you, and that I want to make things right between us, but before we talk about those things, I need to ask if you can forgive me for being such a bitch to you. I buckled under the pressure from being over my head and I was facing outright failure only two months into the job and I let myself panic at the thought of losing such a great opportunity. I thought if I failed in front of all of those important breeders that I might never live it down, that our business we planned to build together would be ruined before it even started because everyone would know I was a screw up. I just, lost it! I forgot why I went over there in the first place, to help us get a good start financially. If there is one thing that went according to plan, that's it! I made enough money to put a down payment on a ranch and we could get started, like we planned."

She searched his green eyes for answers she used to get without him having to tell her anything in words, but she couldn't read him like she once did. He seemed to have built a wall that was strong enough to keep her from seeing through to his thoughts and it shook her up to realize she had lost a big part of her connection to the mind of the man she loved.

"I think I would feel better if you would just yell at me! Don't you have anything you would like to say? That you hate me, like everybody else around here? How disappointed you are with me for being such a jerk? Ask me how I could forget to respect the best friend I have ever known? _Say something_!"

"What would you like for me to say, Amy? _Oh, that's alright, I know you didn't mean it so everything is just great between us!_ " he scoffed.

"No! I don't want you to say anything but the truth. I deserve it if you're still mad at me and I can take it! I just want you to know that I am ready to do whatever it takes to make everything OK between us! I need to hear you say that you would try to forgive me and give me a chance to prove to you what I'm saying is true!"

"Look, Amy, I forgave you a long time ago. I figured out that if I couldn't do that, then it would destroy me. I had to find a way to move on or else I wasn't going to make it!"

Amy reached out for his hand and squeezed it when she realized what he was referring to, "Lou showed me the gun, Ty. What were you thinking when you got it? You scared a lot of people who love you, and I have been beside myself ever since she told me about what happened."

"There is no need to worry, if that's why you are here. I'm over it! I wanted to hurt you back, but I had nothing left to even concern you while you were away. So, I felt like the only thing I had left to take away from you was your conscience and that it might torment you to think that I died because of you. When you are drunk out of your mind a lot of ideas seem better at the time, not so much after you sober up!"

She felt a searing knife go right into her heart when she heard his words. The idea that she had turned the most loyal man she had ever met into someone that would think about throwing his own life away just to spite her slapped her with a sobering awareness of how far her life had gone off track and she broke down with her humble reply, "Ty, I am so sorry! If I had lost you I like that…, I can't even think about…," Pausing to draw in a deep breath to focus on what she needed to say, "Will you give me a chance to make all of this mess up to you? I promise everything I will ever have that I will do my best from now on to treat you like you deserve to be treated. I need you, Ty, and I want things to be like they used to be with us, together!"

Ty finally looked her in the eye and said, "I used to think those words were the most important thing I could ever ask to hear. But, things like they used to be? That didn't work! It wasn't enough for you! I can't make myself believe after the way you have been living that you just up and decided that life back in the country is going to satisfy you in the long run. What really happened to change your mind? Did you try your prince on for size and find that he didn't fit like you hoped?"

"Hey! I expect you to be upset with me, but that was kind of mean! If you are asking if I slept with him, the answer is _NO_! I haven't slept with Ahmed!

"Really? I have seen the videos, Amy, and the photos online of your side trips to places that don't have anything to do with horses, unless they can swim in the streets of Venice. Was that just a goodbye kiss that popped up on YouTube? I didn't see any horses there either, just diamond necklaces, fancy clothes, and wine, and a pair of royal lips sucking on your face!"

"That wasn't what it looked like!" she pleaded, but after seeing the video for herself, what else would he think? "He had just given me a necklace from the team as a going away present and I guess he thought I was sending him signals that I wasn't and…,"

"Stop it, Amy!" he calmed himself before continuing, "If the team presented you with an expensive gift like that, they would have been gathered around to see you receive it, don't you think? Nobody was there, except for Ahmed. And you say you haven't been sleeping with him?"

"NO!"

"Then how do you explain this package that come to me today right after you left!" and he slid the opened package into her lap.

She jolted to attention when she was what was laying inside. "This is…, I don't know what this is!"

"Read the note, maybe that will help your memory," he spoke without any particular tone.

 _If Amy happens to drop by would you please be so kind as to return these garments to her? They are in disrepair but they are only intended to enhance the memory of the beautiful evening we shared at my villa in France!_

Her face was the color of the paper she held in her hand, drained of the hope that she had tried to maintain, and she had nothing to offer in her defense for the ripped panties in the box when he asked, "Those belong to you?"

Five seconds with no response gave him the answer as Amy sat dumbfounded and speechless.

"I am sure there is a good explanation of what someone is doing with underwear that somehow got accidentally ripped off of your ass, and made damn sure I found out about it, but you can spare me the details, I don't even want to know! What do you want with somebody like me, Amy? Don't you have a golden throne in some goddam palace to go back to with a real life prince waiting for you to get there?"

Amy clutched at his hand as Ty slowly stood, pausing to take one last look around the place they had shared most of their private moments together, and said, "Goodbye, Amy, I hope you find whatever it is that you are looking for."

"But you can't leave without giving me a chance to explain! I love you and you love me!" desperately hanging on to her last hope of reconciliation.

"I will love the girl that I asked to marry me until the day I die! She was mine and I was hers and that's just the way it was! But, the last time I ever saw her was when she left me standing on the ground as she flew away on that goddam helicopter with that fucking prince, and I never saw her again! You're sure as hell not her! Neither was the girl I saw in France! To me, it's like she died and I will never see her again, so I gotta just get over her and move on!"

Amy's legs gave way and she collapsed onto the wooden porch. She began to cry hysterically as he walked away and straddled the old motorcycle that she had helped put back together, twice, and wished there was some magic spell to freeze time until she had an answer to what had just happened and gave a last whimpering plea, "Ty! You have to believe me! I told you the truth!" He was gone with nothing but a diminishing roar of a vintage engine pulling him away from her as fast as it would run. Her skin tingled at the snarling ache inside of her as she curled into a ball and sobbed wildly knowing that she had spent her last chance to save them, and her blood started to boil at someone out there who had intentionally ruined her reclaiming the real dream she that she had only begun to understand.

To be continued


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Lisa trotted across the kitchen to catch the phone before it stopped ringing, "Hello?"

"Hey, Lis, it's me!" Jack gave his consistent greeting with only a minor change of tone indicating his current disposition.

"You don't sound too chipper this morning! Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" the well-tuned in wife asked when she noticed a hint of dismay.

"Amy's back! She came back to the ranch early this morning."

The implication clicked and she mused, "So, does that mean they worked it out, like, she and Ty spent the night somewhere?"

"I don't think it went so well, Lis. Lou intercepted her when she came in and said she looked like hell! Amy told her that Ty wouldn't listen to her and left shortly after they ate and she stayed in the trailer last night, alone. She went into her room when she got here and hasn't come out since!

"I'm going to call Bar! Maybe she can check on Ty to find out if he is OK! She has talked to him a couple more times since the first day here at Fairfield and felt confident that he would be able to face Amy, but I don't want to take any chances! And, what about Amy? Don't you think someone should check on her as well? If Ty rejected her, that is going to upset her terribly! I hope she is OK!"

"We haven't seen her to find out, Lis! Lou said she will go in there after her if Amy doesn't come out by lunch time. For now, we are thinking maybe it would be best just to let her be."

"How is Lou handling things?"

"Well, there hasn't been any bloodshed that I know of, although Tim came pretty close to wearin' his breakfast yesterday morning!"

"Go figure! Well, I'm calling Bar! Hold down the fort as best you can and let me know if you need me for anything!"

"Love you!" Jack told his bride.

"Love you too!"

Agreeing to fill in for Cass on her usual Sunday morning shift at the clinic was a spur of the moment decision for Ty but he was glad neither she or Scott were there to ask silly questions he didn't want to answer or to pry into details he would just as soon to leave unsaid.

A knock on the door of the kennel shook him back from replaying Amy's ill-fated attempt to smooth things over the night before and interrupted his scratching the long ears of a rabbit still woozy after its surgery.

"Bar? What's up? I would never have expected to see you here today!" the vet wondered.

"Who wouldn't want to come in here and see all of these little babies!" she smiled, cooing at the fluffy bunny.

"I suppose you heard that Amy was back in town," making the assumption as to the reason for Dr. Bilson's surprise visit.

"Um, uhmm," she nodded, stroking the arched back of the friendly shop cat who walked freely throughout the clinic. "When did you find out she was home?"

"Friday evening while I was out riding my bike after work. I saw her at the Millarville store getting groceries, I think?"

"OK, so, how are you feeling about it?"

"I lost my lunch on the side of the road, but she didn't see me. But, she has as much right to be here as anyone. She was born and raised right here, so….,"

"No, you know that's not what I mean! I heard she came looking for you?"

"Yeah, she did that, alright!" the still mending ex-lover scoffed at the disastrous experience.

"We talked about this, Ty, about when she came to you, what you would say and do. So, do you want to tell me what happened?" she tested him.

"It was a mess, actually." He filled his friend in with details of the quiet dinner and Amy trying to patch up what she called a terrible misunderstanding.

"Sounds like she made a valiant effort, so why don't you look pleased?"

"I would have believed her, the way she apologized and asked me to try to forgive her, that's all I wanted before. I know she was sincere in wanting to make things right between us, but the special delivery that came to me here at the clinic just after she left kind of ruined everything for both of us."

"Delivery? On a Saturday evening?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too! This guy came in the back door of the clinic not ten minutes after she left and handed me a box that he didn't ask me to sign for. The whole thing was fishy. He wasn't wearing a uniform and he couldn't get out of here fast enough after he left the package," the suspicious vet reasoned.

"I take it the package had an influence on your conversation with Amy?" she asked even more curious with suspicion.

Ty told Bar about the package's contents, the note, and Amy's shocked reaction and inability to deny the implications.

"Ouch! Someone is playing rough! Who do you think that person is?"

"How hard is it that to figure out, Bar? The note said ' _a reminder of our wonderful evening at my villa in France!'_ "

"Yeah, but there was no signature, right? There is a possibility that someone else who wants to do any of you harm could have done it as well, although it is damning evidence, to be sure! You should all be careful because whoever did this is determined to cause you problems, and so far, they've succeeded!"

Deciding the time had come to get to the looming question, "Do you believe her when she says she hasn't slept with Ahmed?"

"I don't know what to believe anymore! No matter how I try to make sense of it, somebody has personal things of hers they shouldn't have access to, and she couldn't explain why, so what _can_ I believe? How many scenarios can there be to explain someone having her ripped underwear?"

Bar thought about describing a few encounters to the young man but thought better of it since none of them would have suggested a more favorable conclusion.

"How did Amy react when she saw what was inside the box, exactly?"

Ty still knew his former lover well enough and described her horror, "She panicked! I could see it in her eyes! I think it made her give up believing she could convince me otherwise, like there was too much evidence to argue against."

"How do you think Amy is dealing with the aftermath of your meeting?"

Bar noticed a sudden decline of his defensive posture when he answered, "She was pretty badly shaken up when things went south." Ty worked his jaw and pushed out an idea, "If you would go to her and see if she's OK, I will cover the cost. I think she might be in trouble and nobody knows how to help her. Things may be over for us, but I still don't like seeing her like that! I would appreciate it if you could make sure she is alright, you know, give her somebody besides Lou to talk to because I would bet she has been tough on Amy."

Having experience with many unique cases left little opportunity to have a client surprise her, but Ty's reaction made her recalculate his overall condition and her respect for the kind hearted young man took another huge step upward. "You are worried about her, even after what you have learned?"

"Yes, I am!" he said as he studied the laces in his tennis shoes. "What is happening now, that's not her, or it didn't used to be! For someone who should have the world by the ass right now, she looks to me like she is just…, lost! If she doesn't get straightened out soon I think she is going to be in serious trouble and I don't know of anyone she has around her to give her the help she really needs!"

Bar needed to understand the basis of his worrying, "What do you mean by serious trouble?"

"I mean, Amy has always been slow to accept change of any kind, just like her Grandpa, but now, change is all she has! I can tell she is scared, she said as much last night, but I think it goes farther than us being over. There's more going on with her and she seems like she doesn't know how to handle it, whatever it is."

"And what are you thinking about a future without Amy in it?" she asked, trying to evaluate his commitment to moving forward alone, for a while at least.

The vet deliberated her question and whether or not to share the developments in his new friendship, "What's the old saying? No more crying over spilled milk! One day at a time! Time to turn over a new leaf! Cliché after cliché of bullshit! I'm still getting used to the idea that this part of my life is finished and it's time to look ahead. I'm hoping a good trail ride through the foothills tonight will help!"

"Oh?" the doctor asked.

"I guess you could say I have a date!"

The doctor's red flag alarm went off, "Don't you think it may be a little too soon to start another relationship, if that's what you are thinking?"

"Amy and I have been over for months, Bar, and I am tired grieving over her! I can't just stop living because I know I won't have her in my life anymore! As a matter of fact, I am taking it slow with Charlie because I think she is a pretty awesome lady and she is worth waiting for! We have really hit it off well and I get along great with her family, so I don't want to mess things up by rushing into anything serious too fast. But, I gotta tell you, everything has been a lot simpler with her. No silly games, just straight talk and no bullshit, the way I want it to be with _anyone_ from now on! The dinner at her grandparent's house this afternoon, it's just a family get together and a chance for us all to get to know each other a little better, that's all."

"Alright then, nice and slow, OK?" the doctor reasoned. "It is for the best for all of you not to move too fast, but if you get along well and nobody starts making outlandish demands of the other ones involved, maybe it can be a good thing! But, remember, I'm going to be watching you!" she gave him a crooked smile and jabbed her index finger into his chest before turning to leave. "Oh, as for checking on Amy, Lisa already asked me to come by to see her, so I promise I will do what I can to help, OK?"

"Thanks, Bar! I mean it!" Ty watched her smiling back to him and chuckled when she almost bumped into Cass as she came through the opposite side of the door. His co-worker side stepped the smartly dressed woman and sat her bag down beside her desk, twisted her head over her shoulder to watch the mystery woman speed through the back of the clinic to her new SUV, and slowly returned her gaze to Ty while sporting her standard accusatory grin looking as though she was waiting for an explanation when he cut her off, "Don't even start!"

" _Damn_ , buddy! When you bounce back, you do it _right_! It's like all of these knockout women are hovering around this wounded little lovebird who has fallen onto the ground and they are all fighting to see who gets to put him in their nest!" she mocked him with twiddling fingers as if she were painting a picture of her muse.

"You can't help yourself, can you?"

"Are you kidding me? It's a _lot_ better to watch the goings on around here than any of those stupid reality shows on TV! I can't wait to see who finally rescues you from your pitiful self! I hope you ate your Wheaties because it's going to be _hell_ on you to keep up with _all of_ _those_ gals!"

Lou stood on the front porch of the ranch house and waited for the driver of a white SUV to step out of the vehicle. She almost choked on a nibble of left over Pop Tart when a beautiful well-dressed woman she thought to be about her age walked up the path and climbed the steps to meet her. "Hello, Dr. Bilson? Lou Fleming-Morris."

"Hi, Lou! Just call me Bar, there are no doctor's in the office today!"

"Lisa told you about my sister, Amy?" she asked.

"I have been hearing about Amy for a while now. It sounds like she had a big setback last night," she started.

"Yeah, she is absolutely devastated! She came back home from Europe to see her family, of course, but her most important purpose of coming home was to try and fix her relationship she screwed up with Ty. Last night was when she tried to talk to him. She said he seemed willing to listen to what she had to say at first but something happened to ruin her appeal to him at the last minute and it must have been something big because she has lost all hope of saving their relationship now!"

Dr. Bilson briefly explained what Ty had told her about the package and Lou turned the color of the roses on the window sill beside her when a blurry picture of the disaster started to focus and she blurted out, "Oh, my, God! Someone has done this to them and I have a pretty damn good idea who!"

"I know it looks like Ahmed or one of his people did this, Lou, but nothing can be done until we know more. There are a lot of people involved in her life in Europe that we have never met or even heard of yet so we need to learn more about this guy and who his friends and employees are before we can be certain of a motive to hurt Amy and Ty."

"I suppose you are right, Bar, but his motivation _is_ Amy! He has been working on screwing up her relationship with Ty for months, and if I find out that I am right, that son of a bitch better never come back to Alberta or I'll hand him his jewels to carry in his pocket!"

"OK, then! Now that we have that cleared up, where is Amy? Does she know I am here and is she willing to talk to me?"

Lou replied, "I got her out of bed not long before you arrived. She is a mess because she has been crying non-stop since she got back early this morning. She isn't happy about a stranger coming to see her to talk about such personal matters but I told her you are a good friend of Lisa's and I know your capabilities and that she should trust you, that, and she agreed she would rather do this than listen to me nag to her about it if she didn't! She should be ready by now. I'll check and see how she's doing."

Cold water spilled through Amy's fingers as she scooped it into her face to see if it might help to minimize the swollen features around her eyes. The eye drops had helped to clear some of the bloodshot redness but it would take days before she looked like herself again.

Lou cracked the bathroom door open and asked, "Amy, are you ready?"

Aggravated by her sister's dismissal of the obvious, "Do I look like I am ready?"

Lou slipped inside and stood beside Amy facing the mirror and lied, "You look much better! Lisa's friend is here to see you. I've met her, she's really nice!"

The last thing the beaten down woman wanted was to talk to anyone about anything today, much less a stranger, but she knew anything besides what she had been going through for the past sixteen hours would have to be an improvement and her unrelenting sister's pestering would be much worse if she didn't. "Do you really think this is necessary? Just because my life sucks right now doesn't make me crazy…, yet!"

Lou replied, "What can it hurt? If you don't like her or you don't feel better after you talk for a while, then no big deal, you can go back in your room and continue crying until your eyes are swollen completely shut!"

Amy inhaled deeply and exhaled it through her pinched lips. She followed Lou into the hallway to face the friend of her step grandmother poised graciously in her stunning ivory riding gear, silk top and polished boots.

"Hello, Amy, I'm Bar!"

"Excuse me?"

"Short for Barbara, but my friends call me Bar!"

"I'm sorry, I just wasn't expecting such an unusual name!"

"That's OK! When I was in high school, my friends would call me 'Echo!" she smiled as she waited.

"What?"

"Echo…, get it?"

Amy scoffed at the childish attempt to win her over but smiled out of politeness.

"Sorry, but from my understanding of your last twenty four hours I figured I'd at least take a shot at making you laugh! Guess I'd better not quit my day job, eh?"

The sophisticated woman's embarrassment did make her smile though and she decided she would like to get a feel for what the professional shrink intended to accomplish by coming all the way out here to see her. Amy sat in the chair across from her at the table, "I suppose you know all about my train wreck of a life?"

"Bits and pieces! But, we can get to that later! Lou made us some homemade banana nut bread muffins to take with us if you feel up to a trail ride today. I'll bet there are a lot of nice places to take a ride around here!"

"Sure! If a good trail ride won't make me feel better then you may as well give up. Mom used to say that riding a good horse would center up the spirit quicker than almost anything. She learned it from a First Nations friend of ours who lives up in the mountains."

Time passed quicker on the trail than Amy realized when her stomach growled from not being fed all the way into the early afternoon," I don't know about you, but I am starving! Lou put some things she made for the other's lunch in my bags so we could stop down by the river and have a picnic, it's my favorite place to get away from everyone and think about things!"

After the two women tied their horses to a fallen tree near enough to the river for the horses to drink from it while they waited, Amy spread a checkered outdoor tablecloth on the river bank and her riding companion unpacked Lou's goodies from the saddle bags.

"This is an amazing place! I love it here! I can see why you like it so much!" the first time visitor noted.

"My mother used to bring me and Lou out here for picnics on our all day trail rides when we were still little. I have a lot of good memories of this place!" Amy's face was noticeably brighter at the thought of those days. Her new riding partner had managed to bring her out of the pit of depression through surprisingly enlightening conversation skills and she had become glad that Barbara Bilson made herself available to spend time with her today. Her often funny, sometimes naughty analogies were unique to anyone she had known since Ashley Stanton, her friend who broke the heart of one of she and Ty's best friends, Caleb O'Dell, and moved away to Vancouver several years ago and left her without a good female friend to share sensitive conversations with. But her spirit soon dimmed as her gaze drifted down to the tall grass on the riverbank where more recent memories butted in.

The professional observer noticed her new friend's spiritual nosedive. "Maybe some other memories, too?"

Amy explained, "This was a favorite place for me and Ty to come when we wanted to be alone. We could stay here for hours and never say a word…, you know, just being together, laying on a quilt spread in the tall grass over there, hidden away from the world watching clouds and the river floating by and loving life," the memories threatening to bring her much improved outlook crashing down again.

"Amy, you have told me about your childhood and much of how you came to be the woman you are, but maybe it is time to take of some of what you are carrying around inside of you and let it go. Have you thought about the things that have happened to you and why they did?"

"You mean, do I blame anyone besides myself for all of my problems?" the single again ex fiancée assumed.

The doctor got more serious and asked, "You have suffered some significant blows recently! Everything has a cause and effect. How do you think you got here, like this, today?"

"I honestly don't know! I struggled with getting used to my new job and I panicked when things didn't go as well as I'd hoped in the beginning because one of my biggest fears is failing, especially at something as important as the new job I took on! I don't even know now what the hell I was thinking when I took the damn job in the first place! It was trouble just waiting for a place to happen! I guess I let those things take over what I was really after, a nice life with the man I chose to spend it with, and now I have screwed everything up! Ty hates me, Lou and grandpa hate me, Lou's oldest, Georgie, who was my biggest fan until all of this happened, she hates me now and can't even stand to look me in the eye! I don't know what I am going to do, Bar! I've lost everything that was really important to me, meaning the people that I love!"

"You shouldn't underestimate those people, Amy. I have talked to most of your family enough to know that no one feels that way, including Ty."

Amy's face rose from where she had been hiding her puffy eyes and wondered what those words were supposed to imply, "Of course he does, Bar! He wouldn't even have needed to say anything to tell me how he felt last night! I know almost everything about him and I've seen all of his moods, and he had hate in his eyes when he handed me that box!"

"You must not confuse hurt and anger with hate, Amy. Consider what Ty was feeling when you gave his ring back to him and said the things you said! And then there is the mystery package, we need to talk more about that later, but what would anyone think when presented with such damning evidence delivered right to his doorstep? He was heartbroken, in fact, the real life definition of devastated, but I have never heard him say anything to indicate hate," she revealed, then decided to share one last bit of support from the ex-lover to the woman so full of self-doubt. "I stopped by to see Ty this morning. He was working alone at the clinic, probably as comforting of a place as he knows right now, and he wasn't as angry as you might imagine. In fact, he asked me to come by and talk to you because he knew that our conversations between us were helpful. He believes you are hurting too, and he wanted to make sure you were going to be OK even though he knows he will probably have to move on and start over without you. Hate is not a part of what is going on here, at least with the people here at home." Bar adjusted her position to face Amy more directly and probed further, "This package full of intimate insinuations, what do you believe was the reason for it?"

"It had to be someone who knew that I was coming back home to see Ty and try to get him back! Why else would they have sent it directly to him?"

"Who do you think would want to hurt you in such a ruthless way?"

Amy pondered the question and tried to come up with a list, "There were a few people that were not pleased with Ahmed's decision to offer me the position of head trainer to his team. There are a few of the men and maybe a couple of the women that have made it unmistakably clear that I am intruding on their turf, some with the team and some were a kind of delegate from his government. There are people who are watching him because he is next in line to inherit the throne of his country, if they all agree that he is capable. The men are just jerks who have some other agenda, like I am interfering with another plan they had in mind, and the women, I suppose they are upset because they think I slept my way into the job, not that they wouldn't if they had the chance!"

"Do you think Ahmed would try to sabotage your reconciliation with Ty to benefit in making you available to him?"

"No! He would never do anything like that! He loves me and…," she stopped abruptly at the shock of her own words, then finished in confession, "He told me that he loves me and that he will wait for me, as long as it takes."

"Do you have feelings for Ahmed?"

The directness of Bar's question was unexpected and the doctor took note of the pause the uncertain woman consumed before trying to reply.

Amy hadn't taken the time to think about how close she had come to a life changing decision in the prince's company and realized she was free to do whatever she wanted from now on with the ties of her past no longer holding her back. "We have come close to…, I don't know, the next step. I was feeling lonely and homesick at a party Ahmed gave for the team at his villa in France and I was one of the few who was there alone, without a date of my own. I don't usually drink at all, but I had had three or four glasses of wine and Ahmed took me to place on his property, it was a cave underneath a waterfall, and it was so romantic, and I was just so lonely and tipsy, and he just kept pushing me a little farther, and a little farther, and I wanted him so much right then…, that's when he ripped my underwear."

"So you came close, but refused him at the last second?" the doctor tried to understand Amy's situation.

"I pushed him away and told him that I wasn't ready. The underwear stayed inside my jeans, I never took them off! I threw them away in a waste basket later in my room. That's the last I saw of them, until last night!"

"You do have feelings for Ahmed, then?"

"I don't know? It isn't the same as when I'm with Ty. I mean, Ty is _everything_ to me and when we are together, nothing could be better! With Ahmed, he just knows how to make me feel…, something…, I don't know how to describe it…," she ran out of words to explain how the prince could rouse her to respond to his passionate advances, almost altering her will!

The doctor interjected, "Feels like…, you are empty and on fire deep inside you, and you have this insatiable need for something, a man's body, to fill you up?"

Bar could not have been much closer to knowing what she had been experiencing and it made her feel dirty to admit it to anyone, even to herself. "It's almost like my body takes control over my mind and I can't think of anything else. Ty makes me want him, and he does everything right when we are together because I feel so loved when I am with him, but Ahmed is…," again she could not find a word to describe her infatuation with being intimate with someone other than the man she was supposed to be loyal to.

"Forbidden!" Bar nodded and pursed her lips at the familiarity of the feeling. "Maybe a better way for you to understand what you are dealing with is this. Your body is going through cycles of cravings and hormones whether your guy is around or not! Some of us are wired differently and it doesn't matter if your head is telling you no! When you have been out of contact with the man who is supposed to provide you with relief from those urges for months at a time and there are so many new and wonderful things happening to stimulate you, power, success, money, and a handsome guy who is hot for you and isn't afraid to let you know it by pursuing you relentlessly, then your body goes into a mode wanting to be satisfied, no matter if you think it's right or wrong. You are thinking about it constantly, you can't concentrate on your work, you can't sleep, and it seems like the pressure just keeps building and building, you push yourself against objects just to feel the pressure against your body, you can't ride a horse without coming and your body demands that it is not going to settle for less than a real man!"

"Yes, exactly! It was driving me crazy!" perking up and putting aside her embarrassment and reluctance to speak of such wanton imaginings, relieved at knowing someone else actually knew what she was going through. "After the incident under the waterfall, I started having these daydreams, not about Ty, but surrendering to Ahmed, to stop pushing him away and just let him take me right there in the stalls with the horses! I would leave the stables and go back to my room…, and try to find a way to get over it by myself!"

"Getting yourself off only prolongs the inevitable. Sooner or later, you are going to find a way to have a man inside you at all cost, even at the risk of losing a long term relationship to someone who is out there waiting for you. And besides, when you are so far away from home, who is going to even know, right?"

Amy shuddered at the reality coming back to slap her in the face. "It's just, so _wrong!_ How could I let these thoughts take control of me and ruin my life like they have done? And what's worse, I didn't even do what I was accused of. I admit, I came really close to going too far, but I waited to get back home, to Ty, and now look where I am! What have I got to show for it? _Nothing but one big fucked up mess_! I've never had anything like these feelings before! What am I supposed to do now?"

"You never experienced these urges before your trip to Europe?"

" _No_! I mean, I used to look out my window at night and wish I had the courage to sneak out to Ty's loft and make out, but all the girls I went to school with had pretty much the same fantasies about their boyfriends, mine just happened to live within sight of my bedroom window!"

"Are there any more changes, like, violent mood swings, difficulty making decisions, inability to control certain urges, besides sexual urges, depression, or anything else that seems new to you?

"I have been living in a state of confusion lately. It seems like my life has taken off without me and all of these crazy things are going on and I can't keep up with it. Having all of these urges and the guilt they cause, I figured that was why I am getting so tired, like I never have the energy I need to get me through the day!"

"Have you ever suffered from trauma to the head, like been unconscious for an extended period of time?"

"Yes, I've had more than one concussion. Once Spartan and I ran across a bear while using the trails through the woods, not far from here in fact, and when he spooked he reared and threw me off. I was out cold for maybe two hours before Ty came and found me laying on the ground. I've been thrown and hurt more than once. Then there was the accident at Hillhurst working with Ahmed's horse inside the barn when some of the horses were turned out during a thunderstorm and I got between two of them to try to stop them from killing each other. That one put me in a coma for two days! I was actually blind for a while."

"Amy, I am going to talk to a friend of mine who is a specialist in traumatic head injuries. Sometimes an injury like you described can contribute to symptoms very much like you are experiencing! There are other diagnoses that can be attributed to head trauma, but we need to get you looked at by a specialist to make sure you were not injured worse than you thought you were!"

 _To be continued_


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

The gate to the 8-S Ranch sprawled as a magnificent example of stone craftsmanship at the entrance of a tree lined drive that seemed to lead to infinity because the end could not be seen from where Ty sat in his blue GMC. " _You've got to be kidding me!_ " he gawked.

He was familiar with the gate because he had driven past it many times before on his way to the mountains but he had no idea the address that Charlie gave to him would ever mean that he was invited to a place like this for a home cooked meal. He looked in awe at the fortification wondering what he should do next to let his hosts know he had arrived but the intricately detailed wrought iron gate magically swung into motion and he heard a voice that sounded like Clint's coming from a box near a keypad, "C'mon up, Ty! Glad you're here!" The drive zigzagged up the slope of a large hill to ease the steep grade and as it neared the top the trees opened up to a lush green carpet of striped grass that would make any professional sports stadium proud. A log and stone lodge Ty estimated to be about the size of a few he had seen in Banff sat back dropped on the edge of a cliff by an amazing view of the Rockies that he almost couldn't believe was real. When he stopped under the covered entry way the right half of a huge wooden door opened and Clint walked out in his socked feet chewing on an unlit pipe and yelled out, "I was glad to see you could make it up the hill in that ol' truck! I guess you can make her run after all!" as he cut loose a big belly laugh and motioned his guest inside.

Eager to show his appreciation for the invitation to dinner, the flabbergasted guest offered two bottles of wine, one red and one white, to his host, "I brought one of each to make sure they would go with whatever Mrs. McCrary made for dinner!"

"Oh, don't call her that to her face, Ty! It'll save you about ten minutes of the "Mrs. McCrary was my mother-in-law" speech, and you don't need to hear that!" he chuckled and slapped Ty on the shoulder. "She would be more than happy if you just call her Margie, and so will I! C'mon in the kitchen, that's where the girls are!"

His eyes widened with wonder as he tried to take in every room when they passed through it and the guest smiled at the sight of older woman running her granddaughter and great-granddaughter through the drill of setting a proper table. Clint elbowed Ty in the ribs and said, "Ain't that a sight?" and laughed which gave away their spying and the three chefs all simultaneously turned to see who was laughing at them.

"Get in here, you two!" the oldest of the three summoned them with a flick of her wrist. "Little Miss Shorty Pockets here is having trouble reaching the table so, Ty, how about you help her out!"

"Sure thing!" he obeyed and ruffled the excited little girls' hair when he took a place setting from her outreached hands.

"Look what Ty brought for you, Marg!" Clint said as he handed the bottles to his wife.

Ty held his breath and waited as the head chef inspected his gift and was relieved when she smiled and said, "Just what Grandma needs! This is the good stuff! You pick these out yourself, Ty?"

"No, Ma'am. I'm afraid I don't know very much about wine, so I asked my friend, Lisa Stillman to suggest something for me to bring."

"Oh, shoot! Margie! Lay off! I already told Ty about the speech, so can't you let it go, just this once?" he said with a smile and hugged her tightly around the shoulders when she looked up at him, still obviously in love with the man she had been with for a lifetime.

"Just call me Margie, Ty, there ain't any Ma'am's around here!" and smiled warmly as she looked him directly in the eye. "You're a friend of Lisa's?" she asked.

"Yes, I've known her for a long time. She just got married to a good friend of mine, Jack Bartlett."

"Yeah! I heard about that! Jack Bartlett! There's a name I know! We used to rodeo together, or against each other, him and that ornery son in law of his! And his first wife could sing a mean tune, too! I always thought Jack was a lucky one to land her, and now he's got himself another dandy fine woman!"

Ty added, "Lindy? Yeah, I have heard all of her songs. I converted his old 33 1/3 vinyl into CD's for him so he wouldn't wear out the original records and he could take them with him in his truck to listen to."

"I'll bet he liked that! Wait a minute! That girl, Lou, at Maggie's, that's Jack's granddaughter, Tim's daughter, so you know Tim's other daughter, Amy Fleming, the "Miracle Girl!"

"Yes, I know her too," he answered with bated breath wondering where this unexpected twist was headed.

"That girl is sumpthin' else with a horse! I heard she left Alberta and went off with some prince to Europe to work with a royal jumping team in the World Equestrian Games!"

"Yeah! She did!" Ty wished he could find a way to get out of this hole that was growing deeper by the second.

Charlie came to his rescue by putting her arm through his, "Grandma, if you're OK here for a few minutes I would like to show Ty the flower garden!"

"Go ahead, Honey! But we will be ready to set the food on the table in about ten minutes."

"Thanks, Grandma! We'll be back by then."

Ty nudged his shoulder into Charlie as they entered the beautifully landscaped garden and said, "Thank you for getting me out of that! So, you know about…,"

"Amy Fleming?" she finished for him. "I recognized her in the clinic. I take it she is the one who broke your heart?"

"I guess you could say that."

"She must have done a good job at it from what I can see!"

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"I saw it in your eyes when she knocked you backwards just at seeing her. So, did you have _the talk_?"

"What?"

" _The talk_!" Charlie said matter of factly. "She had that look, you know, someone who knows she screwed up and wants to see if she can make it up to you and get back together look!"

"How can you tell all of that from the two seconds you saw her sitting there?" he asked, impressed by the perceptiveness of his new lady friend.

"Because I've been her! But that's a long story. I might tell you about it later, if you still want to go for a ride after dinner, but she definitely had that look! Did it work?"

"Did what work?"

"You are going to make this hard, aren't you?"

"No, I don't mean to be difficult, but, like you said, I might tell you later, after dinner, if you still want me to go on that ride."

"Oh, you can count on it mister! I am _not_ going to let you spit the hook _that_ easy!"

* * *

Clint leaned back in his chair and patted his full stomach, threw the napkin from his lap onto the table, and asked, "Well, Ty, tell me, when are you coming back? I don't get fed like this unless Margie wants to show off and I have been starving to death around here, so the sooner the better!"

Ty was slightly embarrassed at being put on the spot in front of everyone but took it as a compliment that Clint would use him as a prop to tease his wife, "Margie, that was amazing! I have never seen, or _tasted,_ anything like this meal in my life! Thank you again for having me! I don't think I will need to eat again for a week!"

The beaming chef smiled at the flattery and said, "I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Ty! We can't put anything to waste, so I am going to fix a few things for you to take home with you. I can't leave it laying around here or the old man won't get anything done for having his head stuffed in the refrigerator rummaging around for left overs!"

Clint let his wife enjoy her comeback, "That's OK, Marg, I'll bet Ty would loan me a sandwich if I snuck over to his place!"

Ty joined in, "Yeah, but you'd have to promise not to tell on me though because I think I have figured out who I would have to answer to if word got out!"

"You got that right!" Clint egged on his wife with a wink.

Ty's appetite knew which side of the argument he was going to side with, "Sure, Clint! I can tell you are wasting away to nothing with the way she feeds you!"

Margie jumped at the chance to take a mental victory lap around the table, "You tell him, Ty! I will have your dishes ready before you leave," and flashed a gotcha smile to her loving tormentor.

Sammy's head swung back and forth like she was watching a tennis match at each verbal volley and although she didn't get the details of the conversation she knew her great grandparents, mother, and new friend were happy and she liked the feeling of them together.

"I appreciate that, Margie! I won't know what to do with myself with so much good food in the refrigerator!"

Grateful for such a fine feast, the stuffed guest slid his chair back, gathered a few plates, and started clearing the table. The surprised hostess nodded her approval to her granddaughter and then raised her chin toward her husband, "Your arm broke?" at which he took the hint and jumped up to help his friend with the cleanup. Margie leaned close to Charlie's ear and whispered, "Watch and learn, Honey!" and they shared a quiet giggle when Sammy got what her great grandmother just did and pinched her lips to keep the secret.

Clint tossed his dish towel over the edge of the sink and declared, "Time for the fun stuff, Ty, follow me! We'll be back after a while, girls!"

Ty shrugged and joined in step to the reinvigorated older man. He was envious of everything he had seen on the property, but the garage was to die for! Clint pushed through a door on the side of the building adorned to match the house and inside was a gleaming painted floor with new toolboxes full of every tool most gearheads would ever need to fix anything on wheels. The younger hobbyist-mechanic paused to ogle Clint's perfect red and white '55 Chevy truck and Margie's pristine '57 T-Bird in sparkling Azure Blue.

"We'll get back to those later! The bikes are back here! This is the toy shop!"

"Funny," Ty recalled, "I told Charlie that she couldn't call our trucks and bikes toys!"

"Let 'em have their fun, Ty. I know Margie's earned it after the hell I put her through when we were younger!"

After approaching a stack of something covered with a blue tarp in the back corner of the storage area, "Here she is! Whaddya think?" and he tossed the tarp away from a pile of parts that in another lifetime might have been a Norton motorcycle.

Ty knelt to get a better look and started picking through the stack for the more important pieces to evaluate their condition. Every time a part would move Clint would half ask, half hope, "Not too bad, eh?"

After spending the better part of half an hour carefully examining the pile of pipe, tin, and motor parts, "Clint, how much did you give for these parts, anyway?" the more experienced Norton enthusiast asked.

"Eight hundred bucks! Did the guy get to me?"

He mulled for a moment and answered, "No, actually, I would say you did pretty well! From what I know about the serial numbers I think it is a 1951 Norton International! Most of the hard to find parts are here and they are in better shape than mine were when I started on it! I have seen these sell online anywhere between fifteen to twenty thousand in really good shape, and this one won't be that hard to get fixed up!"

Clint clinched the unlit pipe in his teeth and slapped his new motorcycling buddy on the back and said, "You're not just shittin' an old man by being easy on me because my beautiful wife fed you so good, are you?"

"No, I'm serious! Although, Margie might have softened me up a little!"

* * *

Charlie threw her reins over the neck of her black gelding and stood on her tiptoes to peer over his back see how Ty was coming along with tacking his own mount. "It sounded like you and Grandpa had fun out in the garage."

"Man, that is a gearhead's shop if I ever saw one!" he marveled. "It's car-guy heaven out there!"

"Gearhead?"

"You know, someone who likes cars, bikes…, things with gears to make them go!"

"Oh! You mean, big boy's _toys_!" she overextended a grin and stood on her tiptoes again to make sure Ty could see it.

"I thought we talked about that!"

"You had me in a compromising position at the time!" she countered. "Let's hit the trail!"

They kept a leisurely pace side by side and chatted about Margie's cooking, Clint's toys, and the name of the ranch being short for eight seconds, the time a rodeo rider had to stay on a bronc or bull to win a buckle at the rodeos her grandfather promoted for over forty years, the source of wealth that allowed her grandparents to retire in such a beautiful place.

"Grandma thinks you'd be a keeper!" Charlie teased her riding partner.

"Oh, really?" he smirked.

"Yup! She said any man that would clean the table and do dishes afterwards without a gun to his head or a threat of getting cut off from lovin' for a week or two was worth keepin' around! _And_ , she told me to behave myself and not to chase you off before you had a chance to see what a sweet, wonderful girl I am!"

"Well then, I guess you have your work cut out for you!"

"What do you mean by that, Bub? You haven't figured that out already?"

"I have!"

"Really? I couldn't tell!"

Feeling challenged, Ty led his horse closer to his riding partner and pulled up on his reins, leaned across the space between them, and kissed the smart-alecky woman slow and warmly on her lips causing her reddened cheeks to give her thoughts away to him, "You getting a clue yet?"

He could sense she was dazed by the gesture, not nearly as tough as she tried to characterize herself, and gently brushed her flushed cheek with his thumb when she failed to respond with the expected come back line.

"It's just up ahead!" she rushed with the embarrassment of showing her hand too early.

"What's that?"

"The place I want to show you, it's just up ahead!" she repeated and squeezed her horses belly with her heels to get him moving, leaving Ty to hurry to try and catch up.

Sunset was closing in as they dismounted and tied their horses to a stone and pole hitching post at the rear of the clearing on a rocky ledge. A wrought iron and wooden bench faced the west to help them take in the spectacular show of the day's fading light and Charlie sat on one end patting the seat beside her.

Ty settled in his seat and looked closely to see if his date had regained her stride before he slid his arm around her shoulders to draw her closer. "Are you OK?" he asked.

Charlie ricocheted the conversation away from her wellbeing, "I'll bet you don't think I work the brat too hard _now_ , do you?"

"Are you referring to my comment about Sammy's chores?"

Charlie pursed her lips, "Um, uhmm. Not such a bad idea _now_ , is it?"

"No, I thought it worked out pretty well, actually! She loves the animals and gets a little bit of exercise, and it gives her a sense of responsibility, so, I guess everybody wins!"

Satisfied with her first victory in a child rearing debate between them, the young mother seemed to calm a bit more when she sighed and rested her neck against Ty's outstretched arm.

"You are an awesome mom!" he offered. "If every kid had someone like you to take care of them, the world would be a much different place."

Charlie looked out of the corner of her eye and whispered, "Thank you! It means a lot to hear you say that."

Ty leaned his cheek on her hair, "I mean it! I could watch you two all day! Seeing the way you care for each other is cool to watch. I remember wishing I had someone like that to talk to, or to make me feel safe, that everything was going to be alright. But, it wasn't like that for me, nothing close!"

"What do you mean? From the sound of things your folks must have abused you pretty badly."

Ty chose not to elaborate just yet, hoping to avoid the risk of spoiling the moment, and the couple huddled together silently watching as nature performed one of its most inspiring shows. The last glimmer of sunset flickered across the deep blue in Charlie's softening gaze as she studied Ty's silent glare into the western distance, and when he noticed it, "You are beautiful, Charlene McCrary!" and kissed her forehead while she nuzzled into his neck. The sun disappeared behind massive grey peaks of the Rockies, turning into jagged shadows before blending into a black canvas filled with thousands of pin holes that were the lights of every dwelling between them and the rise of the mountains.

"Dad liked to gamble away the rent and grocery money," he continued his story, deciding to open up his old wounds and share some of his secrets. "Mom was, and is, an alcoholic and stayed too drunk to notice until the landlord threw us out about twice a year. She was drinking and popping pills and was impossible to deal with most of the time, and Dad eventually left when some mean people came around looking for him. They beat Mom and me up just to prove a point, I was nine years old! After that, this new guy came to live with us and it got worse, a _lot_ worse!"

The listener was moved at his opening up to her in such a personal way and sat up to brush the back of her fingers across his cheek, "I'm so sorry, Ty. If it got worse than when your real dad was there…, it just makes me shudder to think of anyone treating a child like that! Especially you! How did you turn out like you did after a start like that?"

"I didn't get out of my childhood unscathed," he replied. "I spent most of my middle school and high school days in and out of foster homes. I dropped out of high school and hit the streets, fell in with the wrong crowd, and got busted. They sent me to juvy, over and over again, and the probation officers were about to give up on me completely, except for one, a guy named Clint Riley. He's the one who talked to Amy's mother, Marion Fleming, and got her to agree on taking me in at Heartland, that's Jack's ranch where the family lives, where Amy lived, and the rest is history. I became close to all of them because they were like the first family I had ever known. I fell in love with Amy almost immediately, she was fifteen at the time, and I'd never met anyone like her! She is beautiful, of course, and watching her work with those horses that everyone else had given up on was amazing to me. We became best friends, then lovers, fought and made up a couple of times, then I asked her to marry me a year and a half ago. It took me a couple of tries, but she finally said yes. I thought everything was going fine, but I always had this nagging feeling she would want more than I could provide for her because I didn't have much of anything to offer, and that eventually came to pass when his royal highness, _Prince Ahmed al Saeed_ ," he exaggerated the pronunciation, "came along, managed to find a way to get her away from me, and she left for Europe and all of the fame and fortune being a world famous horse trainer entails. I went to her in Europe after she had been there for a while because I could tell we were getting off track. The time I spent there couldn't have gone any worse. We argued from the start. She said I was being too clingy and that she was disappointed in me for being so needy and didn't have time to spend babysitting a child. That pissed me off and I accused her of being with Ahmed, which pissed her off but I could tell she was keeping something from me, and before that conversation was over I had my ring back in my hand and she stomped away saying that she was done with me and to just go home and leave her alone! So I did! I never saw her again until she came to see me out of the blue yesterday!"

Charlie weighed her options, then asked, "Did she tell you she figured out fame, fortune, and the glamorous life wasn't all it was made out to be? Did she tell you that she missed you, she was sorry, and maybe even still loved you and wanted you back? Did she call and leave a hundred messages that you didn't answer?"

"Almost exactly that! How did you know?"

"Like I said, I've been her!" she laid her head back into Ty's arm and continued, "So, I take it that you turned her down? Why would you do that if you loved her as much as it seems like you did?"

"Something else happened to ruin everything between us, something that proved that my suspicions weren't unfounded. I might tell you about that someday, but its better just to let it go for now, OK?"

"Sure, I know how complicated things can get, and how easily the life that you think is under control can get away from you in a heartbeat! Brad, Samantha's father, was doing well on the circuit and I got wind of an affair between him and one of the touring barrel racers. I reciprocated by starting an affair with one of the rich wannabe cowboys in Edmonton and screwed myself and my shot at marriage up only to find out too late that Brad was being honest when he said he hadn't done what I accused him of, but by then, _I_ was the one who had the explaining to do. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do to go to him and admit what I had done, and why, and I had to beg for another chance to make it up to him." She sniffed into her sleeve and said, "He took me back and we had the best year since we had known each other. That's when Samantha came along and it looked like we were on our way to happy ever after until the night Brad was coming back home across the prairie and fell asleep at the wheel about three o'clock in the morning and ran head on into a semi-truck. It was the morning of Sammy's first birthday and he wanted to make it home for the party we planned for her that afternoon, but he never made it." Charlie held her breath trying to keep from breaking down at the horrible memory which caused a tragic turn in the lives of her and their baby girl. "The police found an engagement ring in his pocket!" Ty pulled her across his lap, surrounding her tightly in his arms against his chest, and let her cry the hurt away.

Slowly she drifted off to sleep in Ty's arms and he held her for hours until his arms tingled from numbness. He pushed the button on his phone to check the time. One o'clock, a.m. " _Shit_!" Clint would probably be waiting on the porch with one of his bear rifles he had seen displayed in a gun safe during the tour of the house. "Charlie, wake up!" he gently squeezed and shook her awake. When she sat up and stretched he stood to see if he could get the feeling back in his unresponsive leg by shaking it, "How good of a shot is Clint? I have a feeling I'm about to find out!"

The sleeping beauty breathed the early morning chill deeply in and out as she regained her presence and suggested, "Don't worry about Grandpa, he needs you to help him rebuild that old motorcycle of his, so, you're golden with him! Its Grandma that's the good shot, so unless you do something stupid, like making a run for it in a straight line with that gimp leg of yours, then you should be fine!" she teased him, at least he hoped she was!

"Got it! Don't be stupid…, tell Clint I'll bring parts for his Norton next time I come over…, and if Grandma has me in her sights, run like Forrest Gump!" he quipped, making Charlie burst out laughing at his awkward situation and plotting to make it off the 8-S ranch alive.

 _To be continued_


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

After a long night of thunderstorms and lightning Amy decided to go beyond the standard early morning routine of mucking stalls and tending to the horses. Turning the restless tenants out into the open pastures would let them run off some of their excess energy since they seemed to have an abundance of it today and remove the biggest obstructions that would hinder her plan for the day. The stalls needed a thorough cleaning as well as the rest of barn in general. This was as good a day as any to scrub away all of the accumulated grunge and think about where the first improvements needed to be made to turn this backwoods barn into a world class facility capable of handling the thoroughbreds she anticipated coming to the ranch after she got her revived business up and running.

The work it was taking to brush away months of neglect made her angry with Georgie as well as her grandpa and sister for allowing her to be so slack with her chores at first, but Amy began to accept that she had unexpectedly left the day to day upkeep of such a hands-on operation to her twelve year old niece, her senior citizen grandfather, and a sister committed to two other businesses on top of taking care of the family without any help from her after she went traipsing around the world in search of her own fame and fortune.

The cleaning frenzy was interrupted when the phone in Amy's pocket buzzed and she reached for it to see who was calling. It was a local number but she didn't recognize it when she pushed accept, "Hello, Amy Fleming!" she answered.

"Ms. Fleming, this is Karen Sutcliffe calling for Dr. Charles Milford at the Foothills Medical Center here in Calgary. I was asked to set up and appointment for you in the neurology center by Dr. Milford after a referral to us by Dr. Bilson. Are you ready to come in and see us?"

"Umm, yes, when did you want me to come in?"

"Well, Ms. Fleming, it looks like the first available opening we have is on the twenty-second of this month. The doctor can see you in the afternoon at three o'clock, if you are available?"

"Of course! It is so wonderful of you to get me in on such short notice!"

"Certainly! Oh, Dr. Milford just walked into my office and wants to speak to you, please hold!"

The usual elevator music interrupted the conversation for a few seconds until she heard a man's voice, "Hello, Amy?"

"Yes?"

"I suppose my nurse here told you who I am and what we are hoping to get you in here for?"

"We have only talked about my being referred by Dr. Bilson and about a date for the appointment," the curious new patient responded.

"Amy, Dr. Bilson and I had a conversation about your symptoms and I agreed that it would be a good idea to have you come in for a checkup. I don't like to see injuries such as yours left unattended any longer than necessary if there are any outstanding issues following what I understand was a severe blow to your head as a result of a kick from a horse, and the injury resulted in temporary blindness?"

"Yes, that's right."

"The first visit will only be to get you set up in our system and for an evaluation of your condition by asking you a series of questions about how you are feeling. It is possible that I may order some tests right away to verify anything I have concerns about, but let's see how you are doing first and where we need to go from there, how's that sound?" the doctor politely suggested.

"I will be there," she said guardedly. "Thank you again for seeing me on such short notice!"

"Alright, then, excellent! I wanted to get you looked at as quickly as possible, Amy, but in the meantime take every precaution to avoid any further injury between now and then because given what I know about your history, the last thing you need is another knock on the noggin!"

"You're one of Bar's friends, alright!" appreciating the drop of formality. "Losing my sight for a while scared me pretty badly and I don't need to go through that again!"

"No you certainly do not want any more of that!" he agreed. "You are very lucky to have Dr. Bilson in your corner, Amy! Her methods may seem unusual, but I know her to be very good at what she does. On a personal note, I happen to be a fan of yours! My entire family is, in fact! My daughter in law, Susan Milford, has taken one of your clinics, you know, way back in the days before your travels took you half way around the world training those fancy horses you have been working with lately!"

"I remember her! She had a beautiful black stallion she was having trouble settling down, let's see, Captain was his name, right?"

"I think you may have just passed the first test, Amy, because if you can remember Susan and her horses name from so long ago, your noggin must still be wired up pretty well!" and he laughed into the phone.

"He was so beautiful and he moved like a champion, when he wanted to! How did she do at getting him to cooperate with her?"

"I am happy to say that although she had a tough go of it at first, Susan was determined to bond with that horse and now they have a few ribbons to prove your methods work!"

"That is so good to hear! I'm glad it worked out for her and Captain!"

"Yes, Susan and Captain have a bond that is a pleasure to watch when they work together. Enough of my taking your valuable time! I will have my nurse call you this afternoon after you have had a chance to round up all of your information and to tell you what to bring with you so we can be prepared for your first visit."

Relieved to finally have a solid plan to get to the bottom of whatever was keeping her from herself, "That's great, thank you, Dr. Milford!"

"Awesome! We will see you then! Good bye, Amy! Have a nice day!"

"Thank you, you too!"

"Who was that? It sounded interesting!" Jack said as he replaced his saddle to its spot in the tack room after an early morning ride to check on his cattle grazing at Tim's Big River Ranch.

"That was Dr. Milford, a neurologist that Bar knows in Calgary. He has agreed to see me about my head injuries, to see if everything is OK in this hard head of mine," she tried to make light of the development but had done some basic research online and, depending on the diagnosis, found that her symptoms could very well have serious consequences.

"That's great, Amy! But, we should have had this done a long time ago! I'm sorry we didn't think it was necessary to follow up after the doctor at the hospital released you like he did. You seemed fine after your sight came back, for someone who had been kicked in the head by a horse!"

"We didn't know, Grandpa! I just felt like I would get better when I had time to heal, and I had my new job that couldn't wait, but I guess I underestimated what can happen with a blow like the last one was."

"Well, we can get you fixed up now! Take it easy, OK? Don't be out doing something to get yourself hurt again. That couldn't be too good for you!"

"That's just what the doctor said," she admitted.

"You don't need twenty years of book learnin' to know something like that! SOHKU, that's where I went to school!" he scoffed and led his paint horse to the gate behind the barn and turn him out into the pasture with the other horses who seemed to be enjoying their freedom.

"What? I have never heard you say anything about going to university! I thought the rodeo circuit was where you went as soon as you got out of high school!" Amy quizzed the older man.

The wise old grandfather smiled and explained with a lighthearted twinkle in his eye, "School of Hard Knocks University! You don't forget the lessons you learn when you go there! Problem is, one of the first lessons I learned is that if you are going to be dumb, you'd better be tough! And, I'm still learnin' sumpthin' new almost every day!"

Several hours of hard labor had made a refreshing difference in the appearance and the feel of the place to anyone who walked inside to inspect it. The floors were spotless and the walls free of any sign of splattered manure or grime, cleaned enough for the fresh coat of paint that was definitely on the list.

* * *

When she finished eating lunch alone in the ranch house Amy sat at the bench beside the front door to put on her boots when the phone rang. It was Karen from Dr. Milford's office calling to complete the paperwork for her visit in just a little over a week and after finding her folder in Lou's file cabinet she answered about ten minutes of questions and wrote down a list of things she needed to take with her in order to be all set for her appointment.

Calling to her horse from the fence surrounding the pasture behind the barn, Amy wanted to see if she could get her pouting equine to come to her without having to get his lead and walk all over hell's half acre to catch him. The second time she called Spartan's name his head snapped around to see where the noise was coming from but showed no interest in socializing. The long missing cowgirl was not surprised at his snubbing her. The beautiful black gelding was known to hold a grudge if he felt slighted by his owner but Amy had always managed to find a way to get him to forgive her, at least when she was still living at the ranch and visited the barn every day with pats on the neck and treats for bribes. But four months without so much as a visit from his owner gave the once abused horse reason enough to resent the one he must have thought left him abandoned again. Getting Spartan tacked in the barn was one thing, but it had been a long while since she had tried to get the horse out of the pasture to saddle him and he was going to make her work for any chance at riding him today.

Thirty minutes of playing catch me if you can had Amy puffing for air when she finally cornered her old friend in the farthest end of the pasture and approached him holding the lead up for him to see it. "Are you enjoying this, boy?" He bobbed his head as if mocking his owner, and she would have bet that he was, but her patience won out in talking the animal into holding still, with the aid of a fresh carrot she dangled in her hand, finally paying off as she snapped the hook around the ring on his halter.

In ordinary times she would have simply swung a leg over Spartan's bare back and rode him to the barn, but she respected her medical predicament and spent another twenty minutes leading the grudge holding equine across the pastures' forty acres back to the barn giving Amy a bit of a workout of her own. Thankfully, tacking her black gelding proved to be much easier in the cross ties with both rider and horse eager to head out on the trail after a lot of neck rubbing and sweet talking during the process of settling their falling-out.

The happier trail partners left the barnyard for a leisurely ride though fields that separated Heartland's most used part of the ranch from the most isolated, enjoying their time weaving through the Aspens that grew hardy in the foothills. The stressed out rider listened to the soothing hum of the leaves in the afternoon breeze and the calming effect to her spirit was undeniable. Amy needed help with her jittery nerves as she thought about the threat of more risky surgeries and long term recovery if a new examination revealed that she was not healed after the accident at Hillhurst like everyone assumed. Research of severe head trauma from the internet and surgeries to repair the damage warned of the possibility of complete memory loss, blindness, again, and partial or even total incapacitation, among other things. Dread built up in Amy's gut with every minute spent thinking about the options she might have to face, but one of the hardest realities to accept, if her condition proved to be serious enough to warrant her worst fears, was that this time, Ty would not be at her side when she woke up to help her face whatever fate she was dealt.

Amy wondered how she could have made it without the man who had become her rock after being accidently kicked by Zeus, Prince Ahmed's thoroughbred jumper, while trying to separate several horses after they had been released by one of the prince's disgruntled trainers during a severe thunderstorm at Hillhurst Stables. Ty never gave up on her when she had already resigned herself to the worst possible outcome of permanent blindness. Always her protector, willing to literally fight to honor her best interest as the two of them saw it, her fiancé had once again proven to be her strength in a horrible time of her life. Having worried herself out of any hope of recovering her sight, the frightened outpatient had even tried to give the man who asked her to marry him a way out of his commitment to their engagement, telling Ty that she couldn't expect him to marry her after becoming severely handicapped, unexpectedly becoming damaged goods, in her way of thinking, only to have him hold on to her even tighter and reassure her that he wasn't about to give up on her, ever, and that he would marry her no matter if she regained her sight or not!

Tears trickled down Amy's cheeks and she lost herself into a bawling fit of rage at an unbelievable run of bad luck, at herself for the path she had chosen to take, and at losing the most important dreams in her life over things she didn't understand. ' _How could I let this happen to me,_ _ **to us**_?' her thoughts asked repeatedly. ' _Why would someone do this to us_?' Building frustration only intensified with each step the bemused cowgirl rode the carefree horse as he strolled his way into the hills.

Remorse and a need to exact revenge upon whoever dared to interfere with her future plans quickly replaced her fears. She believed if it had not been for the package sent to Ty that they would be back together by now, like they were meant to be, at least beginning to mend the damage inflicted because of the separation she had asked for. " _Ahmed wouldn't go that far, would he_?"

Knotted muscles in Amy's gut wound tighter and tighter as ceaseless fretting about the unknown began to unravel her and when she couldn't hold back any longer was forced to dismount Spartan and heave the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left to come up.

The only thing the disoriented woman was sure of after she took a few deep breaths and steadied herself against the trunk of a tree was that she couldn't go on like this. Bar had told her that Ty still seemed to have feelings for her, still worried about her even after their world caved in around them during the talk at the trailer, and if there was one ounce of hope left for either of them she had to try one more time to get Ty to hear her out.

* * *

Lou was in her office in the barn finishing up the weekly feed and supply order for the ranch when she heard the clattering of hooves in the concrete aisle outside her door. When she saw Amy walking Spartan to the crossties she realized they were back much sooner than she expected because they were usually gone for several hours, sometimes not returning until after sunset.

"The barn looks really nice!" the impressed business woman complimented her sister's effort to spruce the place up. "I didn't realize that it was in such a sad shape! I guess we are going to have to show Georgie how it is done, the _right_ way!" she conceded, but realized something was off, "Amy? Is everything OK?"

"I didn't feel well, so we came back. I'm just going to brush him and go in the house to lay down for a while."

"Oh? What's the matter?" Lou left her chair to peek through the door, gasping when she saw the pale zombie like figure slouched and struggling to stay steady, " _Oh_! Amy, you're as white as a sheet!" and rushed to her frail looking sister doing what every mother did at a time like this and laid the back of her hand on her forehead to check for a temperature.

Lou noticed the beads of sweat streaming around Amy's face and studied her closer as she felt her skin, "You don't feel warm at all…, in fact, you feel downright cold! I'll get Georgie out here later to take care of Spartan, we need to get you into bed!" Lou took Spartan's reins and led him into his fresh stall and quickly scooped her arm under her wobbly sister's elbow and led her to the bathroom in the house where Amy requested to stay until the nausea went away.

* * *

Katie fought her usual fight against going to go to bed on time. Rebelling against practically everything the last few weeks was the new normal for her and Lou figured the behavior was due to her husband being gone for weeks at a time and leaving everyone at home feeling resentful for it. Being shorter of patience than usual, the overtaxed mother made quick work of what had become a routine battle of wills as of late. It was high time to take control of this fight and the decision was handed down for a mandatory curfew that got the quarreling five year olds' attention. "No more riding Pogie until you learn the rules around here, Little Girl! You are old enough for us not to have to go through this every night! When you figure out that _I_ am the one who makes the rules, then we can talk about Pogie!"

"Daddy would let me ride him!" Katie sassed.

"Daddy isn't here, is he?" Lou shot back the resentment that all of them shared.

Shocked by the abrupt retort, Katie knew she had reached the limit her mother's patience and decided not to further test her authority when Lou closed the door. The stubborn child wanted to throw a spectacular hissy fit but there were few things more important to her than riding her small pony that she had gotten for her fifth birthday and thought maybe she had better let this round go to the adults until she came up with a better plan.

Having dealt with problem number one, Lou wiped the tears from her cheeks and tapped a knuckle lightly against Amy's door as she opened it just in case her ailing sister had managed to fall asleep through the turmoil between she and her youngest, but Amy stirred when she walked up to the bed and she bent over to check on her. "How ya doin' Sis?"

"I feel like…, _shit_! Maybe worse!"

"I don't like this! Maybe we should take you to the emergency room! Do you think it could be something you ate?" suddenly feeling guilty at the thought of making a loved one ill with something she had made in the kitchen, then worried that one of the others might come down with the same symptoms.

"No Lou, I don't believe it was anything I ate. Nobody else has had any trouble and we all ate the same thing, so…,"

"Yeah, that makes sense, but…, are you feeling any better at all?"

"I don't feel that much nausea right now, but I couldn't even think about eating anything yet! I am trembling, and I'm so weak I don't think I can even move! In ten minutes I will probably be ringing wet with sweat again! It just goes from one extreme to the next! I don't have any idea what is wrong with me!"

"Tomorrow morning I think I will see if Tricia can come by to look at you. Either that, or we are going to take you to the doctor's office to get you looked at. This is weird! I can't ever remember seeing you like this before!"

"Dr. Verani has more important things to worry about than me!" Amy protested.

"We'll see about that! In fact, it's not too late to call her right now!"

* * *

After coming by the Heartland ranch at eight thirty p.m. on the way home from her new clinic, Dr. Tricia Verani finished her impromptu house call for the youngest Fleming sister and closed the door to the bedroom as she walked into the kitchen. Lou pushed a steaming cup of fresh brewed green tea in front of the chair across from her at the table. "Here you go! I poured you a cup. I could fix you something if you haven't eaten!"

"Thanks, Lou! I can always use a hot cup of tea to help me unwind! I already had soup at the clinic before I left, but a slice of your Saskatoon Berry pie would hit the spot!"

"You're eating at the clinic? Alone?" the concerned friend of the doctor asked as she put a slice of pie on a plate and sat it on the table in front of her.

"Yeah, well, Jade is spending so much time with school activities and volunteering at the vet clinic with Scott and Ty after school that I hardly ever get to see her anymore. I just eat alone at the house if I wait, so it doesn't matter one way or the other where I have my dinner."

"OK, that settles it! You will be having dinner with me and the girls, or at least stop by for a glass of wine once in a while, _if_ you can tolerate the riot that usually breaks out at bedtime around here!"

"Thank you, Lou! That sounds nice! We'll have to do that! I think I would enjoy seeing the little one running around. They grow up so fast! It seems like my daughter should still be that size and here she is practically living on her own!"

"It's a date, then! Thank you for coming by, Trisha? I am so worried about Amy! What do you think is the matter?" Lou anxiously asked. "Has she caught some weird kind of flu?"

"No, Lou, I don't believe that is the problem. How long has it been since that poor girl has slept? Jade told me that Ty went to France to see her and something happened, that they broke up, and Ty was having a hard time getting back on his feet after he came back home. And, after talking with her a bit, Amy is probably having just as much trouble as Ty over breaking up like they did. I believe it is likely that Amy has suffered a panic attack," the doctor speculated. "I think the setbacks she has suffered recently have piled up until she isn't able to deal with them anymore! Those head injuries could very well have a big part in this too, so I am extremely happy to hear she is going to see a specialist as soon as possible. I have met Dr. Milford and he is the kind of doctor that I would want to care for my own loved ones if they had an issue like Amy's head trauma. He will be able to properly diagnose the cause of her issues and treat them."

"Panic attack? What does that mean, exactly?"

"Amy has been disoriented emotionally because of the trip overseas. I mean, she was away from home for the first time alone, and she apparently underwent a lot of stress trying to meet the challenges of so many new things at once. Then, when Ty went to see her before she felt like she had control of her destiny, her desperation to succeed led to rejecting Ty because he became an added obstacle in her struggling situation, and their engagement fell apart as an unexpected result of both of them being blindsided by feelings of rejection. I think Amy tried to suppress her anxiety and was pretty successful at it until she got home where the life she expected to return to is so much different now. It only became clear to her after she had to face her loved ones and the finality of her decisions. It all suddenly became _real_! Don't be surprised if the head trauma has left her with some issues to be dealt with as well. Those nasty bumps to the head can come with a price, but Dr. Milford should be able to get to the bottom of it for her and hopefully get her headed in the right direction. Amy is very worried about what the examination may lead to, more surgeries, recovery time, things like that, and the stress over that alone is enough to cause her to be ill in her condition. And, there is this thing with Ty. He has always been there when she needed him, and now…,"

"He isn't!" Lou finished the doctor's thought.

"That's right! And it scares her to know that she will be fighting her condition alone now, other than you, Jack, and the girls." Dr. Verani reasoned. "But not having Ty there for support is going to be a very different thing than having the rest of you there. Those two had a bond that is going to be very hard to replace, for both of them! It's such a shame to see them fall apart. I always felt somehow inspired when I watched the two of them together, like maybe there is hope for love after all."

The repeated term caught the worried sister's attention, "Her condition? What condition are you referring to?"

"Sorry! I should explain! Dr. Milford will be testing for damage to various areas of the brain. These different areas of the brain control functions that cause our body to react to situations like we should. If something causes these areas to alter the way signals are sent down the pathways that carry them to various parts of the body, then the body and mind may react differently than normal as a result. It's possible, likely, in fact, that Amy can sense these changes and doesn't understand why they are happening. She is starting to be scared by what she experiences because of conflicting reactions to familiar situations not matching up to her memories of how she _should_ feel, not what she _is_ feeling. That is a part of the physiological aspect, but on the psychological front, she has lost the love of a man that she deeply cares for and thought just a short time ago that she was going to marry, and she also regarded him as her closest friend. She lost all of that at once! The short answer…, in my opinion she is scared, upset, and mad at the world! Amy is probably facing some daunting times and she feels alienated from the people she usually depended on for the most support. We all need to do what we can to reassure her that she is _not_ going to have to face all of this alone."

Lou agreed, "That makes sense. She has always been stubborn and resistant to anything changing, and now, _everything_ has changed! So, that's what we will do! We will have to make up for her losses and we will all pitch in to make her feel like we've got her back! I will make sure of it!"


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

Charlie maneuvered her versatile John-Deere skid steer with practiced skill around the edge of the barnyard and pulled the lever controlling its bucket to dump the last of the mucked out stalls into an innovatively engineered composting system that she and her grandfather had been awarded several patents for co-designing. Almost no one local knew of her time spent at the University of British Columbia where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture before a rodeo cowboy and the unplanned pregnancy altered her hopes of furthering her educational endeavors. Few would ever suspect as much from a single mom driving farm equipment around a barnyard almost every day of her life. The news of becoming a mother put a hold on the doctorate she planned to acquire, but nothing was more important to her than Sammy and providing for her as good of a life as she could manage.

The job wasn't easy, and seldom pleasant, but with an inexhaustible supply of the foul byproduct one hundred-plus head of livestock produced every day the enterprising tomboy had managed to turn the mundane obligation to keep a clean and healthy workplace for her family and livestock into a win-win business venture. Owners of 'show pony' ranches, as Clint called them, especially the weekend cowboys who worked as CEO's and executives in Calgary, had no interest in the hands on work required to keep their pristine properties spotless for the white collar types that wanted to spend their recreational time in the meticulously landscaped countryside. They were more than happy to pay someone to come by their ranches and make the unattractive and unpleasant smelling waste disappear. Those same ranchers were also unaware of the irony that the nutrient rich soil their hired landscapers used to plant showpiece flower gardens and maintain lush green lawns for their weekend homes originated from their own animals.

Experience and research, both during her studies in Vancouver and with hands-on practice after moving back to Alberta, had helped the quick study of a young business woman learn how to minimize the considerable effort it took to manage the job of environmentally compatible waste management and maximize the output of the resulting byproduct. Her methods of honing the process were so successful that Clint, being the savvy entrepreneur that he was, had set Charlie up to compost in a big way, enough so that a surprisingly profitable business had flourished from a muck rake and wheel barrow into a large dump truck, farm tractor, six of her patented compost bins, the skid steer, and three full time employees to help with the growing workload. Clint's accountant was recommending for the business to buy another property to at least double the size of her operation and the recycling duo were planning on doing just that after UBC contacted her to offer a grant for the project including financial aid along with student interaction on site, and part of the bargain was to make it possible for Charlie to obtain her Master's degree in process. It would be a huge commitment, but hard work was no stranger to the sixth generation Albertan and a competitive nature fueled her drive to succeed.

* * *

Having instructed her crew of three in scheduling next week's various tasks involved with taking care of 8-S Recycling and the ranch's herd of cattle, horses, a few goats, and a pen holding the six miniature donkeys Clint bought for Sammy at the Foothills Pioneer Days Fair in Hudson, the justifiable heir to 8-S Ranch's assets tossed her gloves on the desk in her office in the barn and turned out the lights before walking into the main aisle where the Polaris RZR four seater that her grandparents had given her for Christmas was parked and waiting. Making one last walk around to check the camping supply list and making a mental note not to forget the cooler full of food and drinks when she got back from town, Charlie climbed in the driver's seat and scruffed her Australian Shepherd's neck when he jumped in the seat beside her and she figured everything was packed and ready to implement her plan, if everything worked out this afternoon like she hoped it would.

Daydreaming was something the busy working mother assumed to be a thing of the past because the realities of life had pushed them aside, but she left the barn with her mind in a whirl and spirits soaring only snapping out of her happy anticipation when Petey, her favorite little donkey, brayed and cut his usual shine to get Brewster, the shepherd, to jump out of the buggy and resume their daily chase around the donkey's pen. Entertained by his comical antics, Petey's caretaker rewarded him with the treat he knew he would get for making her laugh, which she did every day at remembering her just turned five year old seeing the adorable little creatures outside the grandstand at the fair's chuckwagon races and flipping out at how cute they were, and the push over of a great grandfather buying the whole lot of them for her on the spot.

Charlie crossed the barn lot and drove up the gravel road which originated at the back fence of the house beside Clint's garage and the matching storage barn beside it. She passed through the stone and wrought iron gate that opened into her grandmother's beautiful terraced rose garden as she headed inside to take a shower before lunch. It was a different routine today because of wanting to dress up a bit before a planned supply run into Hudson, unusual because she normally jumped in the truck just the way she was for the errand. It was easier that way to fly under the radar of all the obnoxious cowboys that might see her in town wanting to take a chance at asking her out on Saturday night.

The farm raised country girl loved spending a little extra time taking in the smell and enjoying the fruits of Margie's botanical talents on her way back to the house but today she was in an especially preoccupied mood and meandered the winding landscaped trails full of color and enough fragrance to supersede the ' _aroma de' shit_ ', Clint's interpretation of the barnyard leftovers and aroma carried on the boots, jeans, and tee-shirts she wore while doing her chores. It was another of the off color remarks he taught his inseparable granddaughter when she was not much older than Sammy that Margie still held him accountable for.

Three summer visits to the ranch included helping her grandmother set out the roses and pick out the accented background planting and had used up her vacation time during her university years in Vancouver. It made her proud to think that several magazines had used the garden as a feature but the best part of the venture was to know how happy it made the woman who was her rock and savior when she really needed her.

* * *

Margie stood at the sliding glass doors overlooking her pride and joy and watched her unusually rapt granddaughter sit beside Sassy who had jumped up on the bench in the garden wanting attention from the passerby. A flashback to the days when five year old Charlene would sit and stroke her own affectionate kitten's fur smooth and shiny caused the adoring grandmother to smile. She loved the young woman who brought her great granddaughter back to the 8-S Ranch for her to enjoy. Having the remains of her family living under the same roof and the much needed help Charlie was to her husband after suffering his heart attack a year ago was a godsend. This arrangement had turned out to be ideal for all of them and couldn't have made her any happier with how she and Clint had managed to make the best of what was left of their lives and to be able to slow down enough to enjoy life for all it offered them in their retirement years.

"Hey, Gram! Whatcha doin'? It's awfully quiet in here. Where's the brat?" Charlie asked as she came through the door and took off her boots.

"Sammy is helping her great grandpa look at a piece of property just down the road that is going to come up for sale. He thinks it might be a good place to expand the composting business, like you have been wanting to do. As for me, I was just watching my beautiful granddaughter and wondering where the little girl she used to be went to!" and leaned into Charlie with a grandma's smooch on the cheek, "And, wondering what she is so up in the air about today?" she said with a curious rise of her brow.

Deciding to delay what she knew was coming as long as possible, "What makes you say that?"

"Oh, just the way you seem to be floating along without your boots so much as touching the ground, I guess," she egged on the fidgety twenty seven year old woman that definitely seemed to be catching a ride on cloud nine.

"Let me get in the shower first, then we can talk at lunch, OK?"

"Shower? Um, uhmm! That's what I thought!"

"What?"

"Wouldn't have anything to do with stopping by to see a certain veterinarian in town, would it, even if all of the animals are in good shape right now? Maybe you could keep from wasting the trip and get him to check you for ticks while you're there!"

"Grandma! Just…, _Stop_!" Blushing and frustrated that she was telegraphing her giddiness so easily to anyone who knew her that something was definitely up, unfortunately except for Ty himself, Charlie dipped her gaze trying to avoid acknowledging her grandmother's entertained smile as she went to her room to get ready for lunch and the much anticipated trip into town.

* * *

"Charlene! Are you going into town or you packing for a trip to China? Your lunch is getting cold!" Margie yelled from the kitchen.

Leaning into the mirror and searching for anything she might have missed, Charlie tossed her hair brush on the dresser and exhaled a deep breath to get ready for the unavoidable barrage of questions and teasing her amused grandmother was bursting to make sport of.

"Smells good, Gram!"

"Don't it always?" Margie quipped, then noticed the extent of her granddaughter's care in preparing for the supply run. "Wheweee! If you aren't the prettiest ranch hand in town today I guess I'm gonna have to look at 'em myself to believe it!"

Charlie slid into her seat at the table and readied herself for whatever Margie had to offer, both on the plate and out of pure mischief.

Margie took the plate of ham with green beans, mashed potatoes, and corn fresh from her garden and put it on the table in front of her restless granddaughter, "I know I take too much pleasure in teasing you, Honey, but if that boy don't swallow his tongue when you walk through the door, you may as well slap him in the kisser for being stupid and come on home!"

"You think I over did it with the hair?"

"Baby girl, you are absolutely beautiful, anyone can see that! I can look at you and see your mother sitting there when she was trying to make your daddy forget about all those other girls he liked to flirt with! And as you can figure, it worked! He fell like a sack of potatoes when saw her, and as far as I know, he never looked away again!"

A growing self-consciousness crept into her, "So, it's not too much?"

"Maybe a bit, but he ain't gonna be complaining away, I can guarantee you that! Eat your lunch before you pass out! You want to be looking all rosy and ripe for the pickin' when you get there!" Then, easing up with only small talk about Sammy long enough to let the diner finish most of her lunch, "I can see that you have got it pretty bad for Ty, so, where are you two, relationship wise?"

"What do you mean, where are we?"

"I mean, what's it been, four, five weeks since you met him, and are you giving away the milk before he buys the cow, is what I mean?"

"Oh my God! _Grandma_! _NO_!"

"Listen, girly, you have to remember, all women have to make decisions at times like this. You are at the place where you are going to have to decide if he is the one you want to be with, or not! Just because you see me as an old lady past her prime doesn't mean that I didn't have to straighten out your grandfather when we were young and pawing the ground at each other! Don't know if I ever told you, but your granddad was a hell of a looker when I found him, and he knew it! Many a pretty little rodeo queen took a run at him before I came along, but _I_ tied one him that he still hasn't forgotten, and we've been together ever since!"

"Oh, Dear, Sweet Lord! Help me now! Please make her shut up so I can get this _picture_ out of my head!" Charlie dropped the fork in her plate and covered her face with both hands to try to hide laughing out of embarrassment at the woman she knew to take much pleasure in putting her on the run when she had the upper hand.

Margie took note of the reaction and giggled with the satisfaction of making sure the love-struck cowgirl would have something not so easy to forget when she confronted her own new challenges, and then the older woman softened her heartfelt intrusion on the private life of the much loved daughter of her own son, "You're in love with Ty, aren't you?" You might as well admit it!"

Puffing a big exhale in acknowledgement of Margie's accurate diagnosis of her life, "Yes…, I am. How could I _not_ be in love with him, Grandma? I've met a lot of guys, but I've never met a guy like him before! He is just…, so _good_ , to both of us! He is…, _amazing_ with Sammy! I can tell he honestly cares about her, and she feels so special when he talks to her like he really means it. You've seen it for yourself! And he has been so _sweet_ to me, always trying to please me, even with the littlest of things. I trust him, and I don't believe for a second that he would ever intentionally hurt us. _Oh, my God, Grandma_! I can't get him out of my mind! I'm a goner, because I will never look at any other guy the same way again, because now I know what the man I want to be with is actually like!"

Margie blinked away a happy tear listening to the re-energized young woman coming to the realization that she may have a second chance at a full and happy life ahead of her, a long way from where she was the day after Brad was taken away and left her as a broken single mother without hope or faith in anything that was left, "Honey, I guess my point is, that Fleming girl must have put a hurt on him a while back, I can see it in his eyes when someone mentions her name in front of him. You are going to have to make sure he's ready to move on and not going to be thinking about her when you are with him and ready to go running back to her if she ever shakes her tail at him again! It's one thing when you are young and single, trying to sort out the man you want to be with when it's just you and him to think about, but you have a sweet little girl who has really taken to this guy, and you need to be sure of yourself, and so does he, before you take the next step. Sammy would be hurt so badly if something happened and he stopped coming around. I know you wouldn't want that either!"

Compassion of a concerned grandmother won out over the seasoned grit of a rodeo cowboy's wife when Margie moved closer and gave a loving squeeze to her shoulders. "He sure does seem to be a hellufa catch, I'll give you that, but you need to set some time aside and have a good talk about where you are in your relationship to make sure he feels the same way about you before it's too late to get out, if that's the way it needs to go."

"I hope that talk will come tonight, Grandma, if you can watch Sammy for me? I plan on wrangling Ty back here for a nice ride down to the river, since the weather looks like it wants to cooperate!"

"You got it sweetheart! I would love nothing more! I packed a cooler for you to take when you head out in the buggy while you were trying to make yourself presentable."

"How did you know about that?"

"Grammy knows everything about her babies! Now, would you like for me to tell you how I put the cowgirl throw down on your grandfather, you know, for that talk you are planning on having later?"

"Ahhhhh!" Charlie put her hands over her ears as she squealed and ran for the door, Margie cackling with delight after her. "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"

* * *

With her normal stops completed and five o'clock quickly approaching, Charlie wheeled 8-S Ranch's new gleaming red Dodge 3500 4x4 into the rear parking lot of the veterinary clinic and pursed her lips in anticipation of how the next few minutes would play out. She threw the door open, clearly on a mission with a cause, and tried to pace herself so as not to give away the rush of excitement she was feeling.

"Hey! How's it goin', Doc?"

Ty wheeled around on his heels at the sound of her voice and lost his balance when he saw Charlie smiling from underneath the ruffled up raffia-straw cowgirl hat that hovered above blue eyes ablaze with delight at his stumble and highlighted by the curled shoulder length chestnut locks that framed her astounding beauty. He noticed Casandra moving behind the unexpected visitor mouthing an exaggerated "WOW!" and Scott standing beside her looking like he had just seen his friend draw the winning ticket to a fifty million dollar lottery.

Stammering at having no idea how to cover his stunned surprise in her unexpected presence. ' _I need a word, I need a word_ …,' he thought, "Don't you look…, _amazing_! What's the occasion? Did I…, forget something?"

"No, Ty, I actually came by after finishing some business for the ranch here in town to see if I could kidnap you for a picnic down by the river!" she dared him to submit to the surprise invite by raising her chin, expecting an answer. "What do you say, cowboy?"

"You come to town lookin' like _that_ , and you can kidnap a _truckload_ of cowboys, if you want!" suddenly embarrassed for being such a dork in a critical moment and failing to be able to hide it from both the amused women and his mentor who sympathized his feeble attempt to recover his pride.

"All it would take is for you to put a couple of kegs of Coors in your old truck and _you_ could get a truckload of cowboys to follow _you_ anywhere! I came to town looking for just _one_!"

Cassandra was impressed! She thought she had used all of the not so subtle tactics there were but made a mental note when she elbowed Scott in the ribs.

Before Ty had a chance to regroup, the door leading from the public waiting room burst open and Cassandra's date for Saturday night strode through in his usual haphazard entrance, "Hey, Ty, here's the check for…," digging the heels of his boots to a sudden stop as soon as he saw her, his mouth still trying to form words but nothing audible was being heard by the four people entertained by his rare deficit of cowboy wit as he tried to find his reset button.

"Caleb, this is Charlene McCrary," Ty made the introduction, "and this, Charlie, is my idiot friend and sometimes business partner, and I assume still Cassandra's boyfriend, Caleb Odell!"

"Put your eyes back in your head, cowboy!" Cassandra scolded him.

Caleb searched his memory bank, vast as it was, "Ain't no way I would have missed seeing you around here before, so you're new, right?"

"Relatively new, yes." Charlie replied. "I was just asking Ty here if he wanted me to put those two kegs of Coors in the back of his truck."

That got his attention, "You got Coors?"

Charlie folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, "I rest my case!" causing an outburst among the other three, leaving Caleb slightly flustered to suppose he must have been the brunt of an inside joke, but hey, there was free beer, right?

Turning her attention back to Ty, "OK, then! When should I come back to pick you up?"

"Oh…, you may as well take him with you, because I can't imagine he would be of any use to _us_ now!" Scott chimed in with an amused chuckle to send his partner off in the clutches of his captor.

"Yeah, I'm done!" Ty admitted and opened the drawer of his desk to put away his stethoscope and a few things he had in the pockets of his plain blue scrubs.

Charlie hooked her arm through Ty's elbow and led him out the back entrance of the clinic, and when he was sure to be out of earshot of his co-workers and envious friend, "I'm sorry for the way I reacted when I saw you in there, but, I don't think I have ever seen a more beautiful sight in my life! My brain just…, melted, and I couldn't think of a damn thing to say!"

Thrilled by her apparent success with making a lasting impression, the conspirator nudged her apologetic prey with her shoulder and laughed again at his clumsy attempt to regain reasonable composure, "Well, I think you just made up for it! Thank you! You just made my day, Ty Borden!" and dangled the dually's keys from her pinky finger suggesting that he take over the drive to 8-S Ranch, and when he took them, she grabbed a fist full of his collar to draw him in for a slow, full on kiss, and when they parted, tried to hide the telling glow in her cheeks as she floated her way to the passenger side to take the seat beside her willing captive.

"Maybe we should go by the house to get some clothes, I mean, these blue scrubs make me look like a used muck rake compared to you!"

"Gotcha covered, Doc! There's a new pair of nice jeans and a shirt I thought you would like in the back seat, plenty good enough for where we are going!"

* * *

Days of peace and quiet at Heartland ranch without any outside contact other than a visit from Barbara Bilsen on the day after her emotional meltdown had left Amy restless and wanting to get out to explore her old stomping grounds and tend to some unfinished business in town. She had done a lot of thinking about how she ended up back in Hudson alone and emotionally disconnected from almost everything which was her world five months ago before leaving it all behind to experience the adventure of a lifetime. She scoffed at the idea, ' _Adventure, experience, opportunity,'_ "All of that for nothing!" the reeling woman muttered through a scowl etched across her face. A resentful energy continued to build underneath her calm existence, wanting to lash out at whoever caused her to be mistrusted and even pitied by everyone around her.

Bar Bilsen had become a trusted friend to Amy as an underpinning supporter in righting her after the weary girl about the world threatened to tip over from carrying more guilt, anger and confusion than she was capable of sustaining. Through off the record sessions in lending a favor to her friend, Lisa, the city doctor's unconventional methods of trail ride therapy were appreciated by Amy and her family for all she had done for the two star-crossed lovers in trying to give them a reason not to give up on life itself.

Piece by piece, Bar had shared enough information to at least try to set Amy straight on Ty's reaction to being rejected by her three months ago and what it all meant to him as she thought the patient was ready to accept the next step of healing. She emphasized that Amy need not feel so much remorse for hurting him the way she felt like she did because Lou's over reaction made the whole thing seem worse than it actually was. But it was also important for her to understand that Ty still came close enough to giving up in his darkest moment of despair to at least have had the thought, something that would have shaken everyone involved in their relationship very badly, and Amy knew she would never have forgiven herself if he had followed through with surrendering his fight to exist.

"Grandpa, is it OK if I take the truck? I need some things in town, and if you or Lou need anything, I will be glad to pick it up for you!"

Jack looked her over and decided she seemed to be back on her feet and well enough to be safe by herself and tossed the keys up in the air for her to catch them. "Here ya go! Just, take it easy, for _me_!"

"I promise, I will!" she responded, knowing he may still have a few doubts but wanted to prove his worrying unjustified.

Driving into town in the daylight for the first time in months proved to be shocking with how different everything seemed. Objects beside the road looked to have been right where they sat for ages, but somehow she couldn't remember seeing them like that before. When she came to a corner in the road she wasn't always sure what to expect around the bend, something that should have been etched in her mind from years of repetition but had now eluded her memory. The realization was frustrating and starting to scare the native Albertan, making her even more glad to have a plan in place to see if there was hope to recapture some of the things she was tired of losing, or at least to hang on to what was left of her life as she used to know it.

Although she hadn't mentioned it to her grandfather or Lou, Amy hadn't forgotten about Ty's concern for her after her attempt to reconcile blew up in her face. Maybe all hope for a happy future was finally lost between them, but there was too much history with Ty to be tainted by one last vivid excruciating scene together ruining years of good and precious memories as friends, and as a couple who undeniably found their first true loves in each other.

The street behind the Hudson Veterinary Clinic was void of any traffic as Amy passed by the rear parking lot for the third time trying to find the courage it was going to take to offer what she knew would be her last chance to salvage at least the memory of a valued friendship. She turned into the shopping center across the street and stopped in a parking space to replay her appeal one last time through her head before sucking it up and going inside to face whatever was going to transpire as the new relationship between her and Ty. As she reached a shaky hand for the handle to pull open the door a couple walked through the rear exit of the clinic and her heart stopped when she saw Ty laughing at something the fashion model for a cowgirl catalog walking beside him must have said, and she took her hand away from the handle and put it in a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel beside the other one. Amy's eyes widened when the woman grabbed her ex fiancé by the collar and threw a kiss on him that was sure to make whatever point she was looking to prove crystal clear, and tears welled up blurring her vision of the woman who had just stolen her heart and taken it with her as they drove away in the shiny new truck.

 _To be continued_


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Thirty miles may as well have been a hundred to Amy for as long as it seemed to take to drive out of Hudson and make her way back to Heartland. Stinging tears blurred the road and kept her wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands as the image of Ty looking so happy with another woman so soon after their breakup was just beginning to take hold of her. The nightmare of losing him was becoming real and a stark finality with no assurance that time would heal the hurt this time was filling her broken heart with a sense of hopelessness, and she could not think of anything that would turn the disaster that was becoming her life around. " _Why the hell is this happening to me_?" she screamed with all of the force her lungs could deliver into the empty interior of Jack's old truck traveling down the open road to the ranch.

Driving into the ranch, Amy decided she was not yet ready to go directly to the house and have to face Lou and Jack in her obvious condition, or even Georgie who had done nothing but judge her since she got back from the tour, and detoured to a place where she could take a little more time to think about what she had just experienced and what it meant to her future.

The old jumping course was grown over and long neglected. Bales supporting the logs Ty had dragged out of the woods to construct the makeshift course were torn to shreds by herds of deer and the passing of time leaving the once cherished place looking disheveled and sad. In spite of its current condition, the wonderful memories she held of the small patch of ground and the new ranch hand who was bold enough to set it aside from Jack's six hundred acres when he came here to live and work on the ranch were the best part of her very difficult fifteenth year. He had done it as his first indication of love toward her and the gesture completely changed her opinion of the brash young man into one of appreciation, and eventually into what became her first feelings of genuine love for someone other than immediate family.

Amy turned off the road and parked beside the special place, staring into the source of hope most of the important turning points in her life originated from, clinging to the flood of memories she hoped to be able to hang on to. Her eyes closed, trembling from the evaporation of strength as it escaped her body, and let each memory reveal itself in her mind.

She could still feel the emptiness and hurting from the traumatic loss of her mother, remembering the need for a place to practice with her horse because her family had been trying to encourage her to continue jumping as a way to help her heal and move on with her young life. She decided Spartan needed the challenge as much as she did, but the physically and emotionally damaged horse would not go into a trailer after the fatal accident and unless she was able to take him to a real arena with adequate jumps, nothing was ever going to come of her plan to compete again.

Even as a relative newcomer to the family, Ty realized that something had to be done to help his new friend find her way and made a habit of disappearing at odd times almost every day for two weeks, much to the dismay of the wary sponsor of the seventeen year old delinquent on probation in his care, and risked Jack's retribution by confiscating a small corner of an unused field to cobble together a course good enough to help Amy begin to train her new black gelding and put them both on the road to recovery.

The day Ty first brought her to this field to reveal his secret project after it was finished was the day she first realized that he was going to be someone special, far more complex and intriguing than she expected him to be, and the first embers of love began to glow between the young couple. That day led to setting up a bond between her and her horse, both in desperate need of hope, eventually ending the season of competing on the local jumping circuit culminating with winning the Fall Finale Classic, the most prestigious meet of the year. It was the single most satisfying moment of her life because it showed all the doubters who refused to take her training and riding skills seriously what she was really made of, with Ty acting as her coach and playing a key role in the strategy that helped her to win.

Later that evening, after the giddy couple slipped away from her victory celebration party to the privacy of the barn in front of Spartan's stall, Ty caressed her face with his fingers and gently gave her his first kiss, the kind that took her breath away and changed the course of both of their lives.

It all began here, when she first saw the simple labor of love that opened her eyes to the real boy in the loft, the day Ty brought her to explain the reasons he would go missing for hours at a time because of not wanting her to miss the chance to do something she needed to do, something he knew she loved.

There was no use to try and follow through with her plans for anything here at the ranch anymore. Ironically, now that she was financially able to invest in the dream that would have been her business, she realized all the reasons she wanted to do it in the first place were no longer valid. Jack was resisting any improvements to the old barn and babysitting high strung thoroughbreds for even higher strung owners had lost any appeal as a way to make a living here at home. That kind of complicated political nonsense just didn't seem to fit here in Alberta like it did in Europe. But most of all, it was becoming alarmingly clear that Ty would not be her partner, either professionally or personally, and accepting the loss of her best friend and love of her life put a hole in her soul too big for any dreams to fill.

* * *

When Amy pulled up to the barn and got out of the truck she paused to take a deliberate moment to pan full circle and look all around the ranch that had always been her life. _How could she feel like such a stranger in the only place she had ever called home_? The warmth and comfort she had always felt here seemed to be gone, even the loved ones were distant and the pity that emanated from them was suffocating her.

Her own dust had barely settled when she noticed another cloud boiling over the rise beyond Heartland's entrance gate and Amy waited for the cause of it to crest the hill and descend the winding road to the ranch. A new black Chevy Tahoe parked beside Jack's truck and her jaw slacked in disbelief when Ahmed slammed the door and strode confidently toward her with his trademark smile turned up in its fully locked presentation.

"Amy, I'm so glad I finally found you!"

The dull pounding in her ears intensified with each step Ahmed took toward her and when he got within her arm's reach Amy timed a roundhouse slap against the prince's jaw that sent him reeling backwards on his heels and his oiled hair hanging from its secured shape and draped around his reddened face. "Amy! What are you doing?" the startled visitor pleaded, rubbing his palm against the offended area of his face.

"You sonofabitch! How the hell do you have enough gall to come here like you did nothing wrong?"

"I haven't any idea what you mean, Amy! I just came here to give you some good news! I did not expect to have to defend myself from one of my best friends!"

"The least you could do is to admit what you did! I hope you are satisfied with yourself for ruining my life!" she screamed, building dangerously close to another physical expression of her rage.

"Amy! Wait! Please explain to me why you are so upset!"

"Here's why!" Lou shouted, coming to the defense of her little sister, "Here is why you have ten seconds to get your royal ass back in that goddam truck and get out of here, or else you are going to find out what old time cowboy justice is all about!" and threw the box that had come to Ty the day of the calamitous reconciliation attempt as hard as she could at Ahmed's face.

The box bounced off Ahmed's forehead and its contents flew in every direction, the letter and the torn garment laying on the ground at his feet. "What is this?" the accused man asked. "I do not understand!"

"You should know what this is! You sent it!" Lou shouted as she placed a trembling finger at the tip of the prince's nose, making him jump back in fear of losing an eye.

"You sent this to Ty! How could you do such a thing to me, and to him?" Amy croaked, barely able to force the words to come out.

"But, I did not! Why would I do that to you, Amy? You should know how I feel about you! I have told you many times! I would never do anything to cause you to be unhappy!"

"Well, this has made her _very_ unhappy, you bastard!" Lou countered, "Look at her! Is this what you wanted, to cause her to lose one of the most important things in her life?"

"Never would I want that for your sister, Lou! I love her, and I would do anything to please her!" the fumbling prince insisted.

"Why did you come here, Ahmed? What else is it that you came here to do?" Amy demanded.

"I came here to tell you, in person, that I have found Aleah and Rasha!"

"You found them? What do you mean, you found them? Where have they been all this time?" Amy looked stunned and Lou was getting more confused by the second and needed answers, now! "Who are Aleah and Rasha, and why were they missing?"

"It's something I never told you about, Lou, but there were two girls who worked for me on the team who went missing, one in France and one in Spain, and Ahmed had put his security people to work trying to find them before I left for home."

"Went missing? How, exactly?" Lou asked, weary of the sound of the incident and pissed that Amy had never thought her relevant enough to share this kind of information with her.

Amy and Ahmed took turns at filling the concerned older sister in with the details as they understood them and as if Amy's European trip could get any more confusing for her, Lou listened in disbelief at how such a dangerous situation went unmentioned until now.

Lou puffed a big exhale through an exasperated scowl, "We will talk about this later, Amy, but for now, we need to get back to the first issue, and that's you, asshole!"

"Lou! Wait! Hang on a minute!" Amy defended her former employer and friend, "Let's hear Ahmed out! He came half way around the world to tell me this, so, the least we could do is hear him out!"

"He's playing you, Amy! Any damned idiot should be able to see that!" then turned to Ahmed, "And what is this bullshit of people turning up missing from your team? What kind of half assed operation are you running over there? It sounds to me like its nothing but a spoiled rich kid's playhouse and the crazy shit just gets buried in payoffs and bribes! I don't trust a word that comes out of his mouth, Amy, and neither should you!"

Snapping at the verbal assault from someone who she thought should have been more understanding and supportive, Amy unleashed all of her frustrations with fierce retaliation, "You know what, Lou, I have had just about enough of your telling me what I should be thinking or doing! It's my life, not yours! You and everyone else around this dump of a ranch are too busy meddling in somebody else's lives to get you own lives in order!"

"Your opinion of the fancy life you lived in Europe is nothing but a lie, Amy!" Lou squared off to her sister who she believed continued to show an escalating lack of respect for who she was and where she came from, "Smoke and mirrors! This so called wannabe prince, the ridiculously overpriced horses you do nothing for except to babysit, what's that all about, huh? Did you forget what your dreams were all about, you know, actually helping horses that really need help, and making a difference for them and the people who give them homes for the rest of their lives?" Your head is getting too big for any of the hats you are wearing and we are all getting really fed up with your attitude!"

Ahmed watched the sibling meltdown and used the opportunity to defend his friend, "Amy, you do not have to listen to these people! Why so you allow them to speak to you in such a way!"

"These people?" Lou hissed.

Now that he had both of the women's attention, "Come back to Europe with me, Amy! Leave with me, this minute, and I will take care of you so you won't be subjected to this disgusting lack of respect!"

Lou snapped, "Shut your mouth, asshole! Your money or crown is worthless around here and you have no say in how we deal with each other!"

"Is this what you want, Amy, to be treated like a child all of your life, by this…, overbearing, unappreciative woman?" he spouted, feeling empowered by Amy's rejection of the people and the place anchoring the ties that kept her from letting him into her life like he wanted.

"Get out of here, NOW!" Lou screamed, ready to lash out again if Ahmed did not comply.

"I don't know what I want any more, Ahmed," Amy admitted. "I was expecting to stay here, but it looks like I have overstayed my welcome!" Amy said, not believing the words as they escaped her mouth. "I'm not ready to leave, I haven't even thought about packing to go back to Europe to take the job and…,"

"Do not worry, Amy!" the prince interrupted. "Anything you need for this evening, we can pick up on the way to the airport. We will be in the air by five, so there is enough time. The rest of your things, forget them! Leave them here! You will have nothing but the best from now on, I promise you that!"

"How can you even know what Amy needs?" Lou shot back at the prince. "You have no idea!" And then Lou turned to her sister, "Amy, you have doctors' appointments coming up. You're in no condition to walk away from something so important to your health!"

Ahmed sensed he had gained the offensive position in Amy's struggle for answers, "If there are still medical concerns from your injuries, I will get the best doctors in the world to oversee your healthcare, like I tried to do before. These people stood in the way of my helping you, Amy, when they should have allowed me to find you the best care available in all of the world, and now you are paying the price for their ignorance and neglect!"

"How dare you!" Lou was incensed.

"It is true! If you and that stable hand had not stood in my way, I would have seen to it that she had the best care available when she needed it and not have been so foolish as to let her continue to suffer like she is now!" He turned to his prize and tried to convince her once and for all, "Come with me, Amy, and I will make sure that you will not continue be mistreated in this miserable place and have the life you deserve!"

Amy felt the crush of her former life under her foot when she took the first step to the new black vehicle waiting to take her away from the disappointment and heartbreak that had become the new normal at Heartland Ranch. This piece of Alberta was from now on nothing more than an unpleasant memory soon to be forgotten when her busy new life in Europe was in place, and the roar from the many memories as they whirled around in her head kept her from hearing the frantic pleas of her sister as she reached for the handle and pulled the door open to slip into the passenger seat.

Lou wailed at the cloud of dust rising behind the black Chevy Tahoe as it sped up the drive toward the gate, wishing there was something she could do to make Amy come back and hug her and say she was sorry for the things she had said in anger, but instead she was left with a fear surging up inside her gut because she knew her little sister was in serious trouble and she had no idea how she was going to help her now.

 _To be continued_


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Clint pulled the emergency brake of his vintage truck after backing it out of his garage and hopped out onto the dark pavers covering all driving surfaces around the house and out buildings. Always careful about choosing his building materials, the eco-conscious cowboy liked the idea of taking things others threw away and making good use of them, such as the ones made from recycled glass he used in making his driveway the worthy recipient of many compliments toward the intricate workmanship and long lasting results of his labor.

Just as he turned on the spigot to fill the bucket in which he had dispensed a slosh soap to wash his restored Chevy he heard Charlie's new diesel coming up the driveway and shut off the water to walk toward the house. Something was up because he noticed Charlie riding in the passenger's seat and since he knew Margie was in the kitchen there had to be someone outside the family driving unless Sammy had grown three feet since this morning.

The couple had made it all the way to the kitchen before his curious pursuit caught up to them, "Ty! Good to see you!" Clint said when he realized his granddaughter had brought his favorite guest with her from town. "Sorry I didn't know you were coming or,"

"Calm down, old man! He ain't here to see you!" Margie chastised from her place at the kitchen counter preparing a snack for the visitor's arrival and cut her husband off at the pass by stuffing a hot out of the oven piece of German Chocolate cake into his mouth at seeing the potential of Charlene's evening being high jacked by Ty's well-intentioned friend.

"Ty!" Sammy shot off the chair she was sitting in while she impatiently watched Nana M prepare to spread the coconut-pecan frosting and bounded up to the couple, excited as only a five year old little girl can be. The guest bent at his knees as he always did to get to her level and steadied himself for the hug that was standard practice now, returning her contagious smile as she beamed over his attention toward her.

"But I figured since he was wearin' vet clothes he must be here to look at one of the horses, or,"

"No, he isn't!" Margie leaned against the clueless older man, steering him toward the TV room and sneaking a wink at Charlie to let her know she didn't have to worry about a vintage motorcycle convention interrupting her plans for tonight. "C'mon Sammy, help Nana get Grampa situated in front of the TV so you, me, and him can watch a movie together, your pick! We can eat our cake and ice cream in there soon, as I get the frosting ready!"

"Next time, Clint! I promise!" Ty said loudly enough to cover the fast increasing distance between them as Margie ushered the confused loved one away to explain why he needed to let it go this time.

"C'mon, you can use my room to change into those new clothes," Charlie said, relieved by her grandma's quick thinking. "If you want, there's a shower and everything you need to get freshened up."

"Is that a hint? So, you think I've got a case of B.O., or something?" he replied, not wanting to miss a chance to try and make his obviously nervous hostess laugh and relax just a little.

Her eyes popped wide and her jaw dropped, "NO! Uh, that's not what I meant!" embarrassed that he might think she was implying that he reeked of too many hours at the animal clinic. "I just thought it might make you feel better after a long day at work!"

Ty grinned and she smacked his chest, "You really do like to see if you can get the best of me, don't you?" pouting at being the target of his playing at her emotions. "Between you and Grandma, I can see that I am going to need to toughen up!"

After giving himself a quick tour of Charlie's private living quarters, "I know, I'm sorry, I shouldn't tease you, but I think it makes you look so damn sexy when you get all red in the cheeks like that!"

"So, that's it, huh? You think it makes me look sexy? What about this?" Charlie bumped his shoulders hard enough to make him fall backwards onto her bed and jumped on top of him in a full body lock down. She slowly wiggled up belly to belly until she was even with his face and took a gentle nibble on his lower lip, "Yeah? And whose cheeks are all red now?" before she sucked it between hers and turned the playful ruse into a provocatively awakening kiss, then quickly pulled back to gauge her victim's surprised reaction.

Suddenly aware of the new line she was flirting with crossing, Charlie lingered there for as long as she dared, but when she felt the pressure from under his thin blue scrubs straining to meet her she rolled over and said, "If I don't leave right now, we may not get to take that ride to the river! Get yourself dressed…, and don't use all of my perfume!" With that she stood and gave him a devilish smile, straightened up her shirt in her jeans, and hurried out of the room leaving him lying there in a ruffled heap wondering if he was ready for whatever she had in mind for the rest of the evening, but it didn't take long to decide he would be willing to give it a try, nevertheless.

* * *

Finding his way back to the kitchen after showering and changing into his new shirt and jeans, which he really did like, Ty saw Margie putting the finishing touches of frosting on the cake and Charlie beside her with a finger in her mouth after scooping it around the rim of the bowl, looking guilty that he caught her in the act.

"You look nice! You have such _good_ taste in clothes!" offering the backhanded compliment as she scrunched her nose at him. "Want a cup of tea and a slice of my most favorite cake on the planet before we head out?"

"Thanks, but I'm good," he replied, not wanting to take any more time than necessary to risk the opportunity of another interruption to their plans. "So, are you ready to get the horses tacked?" he asked.

"Who said anything about horses? Would you please grab that cooler and put it in the Polaris buggy down by the gate? I'll be there in just a second."

The obedient kidnapee did as he was asked and picked up the well-stocked cooler, twisted it through the door, and returned the eager gaze to his smiling hostess as she held it open for him, and then carried their deluxe picnic assortment down the path appreciating the beautiful rose garden as he went. Charlie and her envious grandmother watched him walking away, "My Lord, Charlene, be careful! He's a dangerous one, that one is, because he's not your ordinary cowboy! He'd steal a girl's heart away and she'd never get it back!"

Amused by the elder woman's allusions in anticipation of what was to come, "Easy, Gram! You caught yours already!"

"Yes, I did! And with a little bit of luck, and whatever else you have planned to help change the course of history tonight, maybe you will be able to get a good start on catching one for yourself!" Reaching her arm around the visibly anxious younger woman's shoulder for encouragement, "I know it's gonna be hard for you to do, Honey, but try not to rush Ty too much. He's the kind of guy you want to take seriously, but he's gonna need some time to get himself straightened out good enough to be in the right mind to take on a ready-made family like you and Samantha, if he thinks that's what he wants to do at all."

"I know you're right, Gram, but don't worry, because I have made up my mind to give him as long as he needs to get over Amy. He puts on a good front right now, but I know what it's like to lose somebody you love that much, and I'm not stupid enough to think I can snap my fingers and make all of that go away in an instant! I know he is still upset about his life being turned inside out, but I'm gonna do whatever I can to make sure he knows I'm serious about us, enough so that maybe he won't see the need in looking around too hard for someone else to spend his free time with until he is ready to move on in his life with somebody else! I want to be the one who is there when he's ready!"

"Well, I'm glad to hear you've thought about this so much, sweetheart, but just in case, take these with you," Margie suggested as she held up the serving sized Tupperware containers, "cause there ain't any man stubborn enough to resist a bite of my German Chocolate cake!"

* * *

"Man, I've never seen one of these up close before! It looks like it would be a blast to run around the woods in it!" the gearhead vet said as he ogled the exotic new recreational vehicle.

Charlie hopped into the passenger seat and said, "Giddyup, cowboy! Let's take her for a spin!"

"Awesome!"

' _Typical, give a boy a new toy and everything else is forgotten about on the spot_!' Charlie worried. ' _Gonna have to get his attention when we get to the river, may be time to see if Grandma's cake is as good as she thinks it is_!'

Ty was more careful than he wanted to be and avoided most of the mud holes and rocky obstructions in the trail that zig-zagged down the back side of the property and ended at the most luxurious rustic campsite he had ever seen. "Whoa! This is where we're going?"

"This is it!"

"Where's valet parking?"

"Cute!" she gave him an amused twisted grin, "Let's get this stuff set up, over there," she pointed to a gazebo with a fire pit nestled above the river and just below a recently constructed log cabin built far enough up the bank to avoid being swept away in high water.

"Clint built this?" he asked.

"Yup! Grandma and I helped as much as we could, but he got it in his mind what he wanted and nothing was going to stop him. But the heart attack almost did! Luckily, Grandma was with him and called for the helicopter to come, and the clearing is open enough that they were able to land and get him out of here!"

"Jeez, I'm glad he was OK!"

"Me too! I don't know what I'd do without him!"

Margie had replaced some of what Charlie packed with her best full racks of prepared ribs which only needed a few minutes on the grill to finish, a bottle of iced wine to compliment them, and enough food to last for three days, Ty figured when he looked inside the cooler. "How long did you tell Margie we were staying?"

"As long as it takes!"

"As long as what takes?"

"As long as it takes for us to have the talk we have been dancing around for a while now!"

It wasn't necessary to ask any more questions because he knew what she meant. "You're right, it's about time we should get around to that." He noticed two six-packs of beer behind the seat and held them up. "These need to go into the river. They will stay nice and cool there!" he called over his shoulder as he walked further down to the water to explore the fishing possibilities.

* * *

The early evening went even better than Charlie had planned. They enjoyed fresh chilled house salads, delicious ribs with just picked corn on the cob, loaded baked potatoes, and two bottles each of Clint's stash of premium beer he didn't think Margie knew he had hidden out in his garage while exchanging small talk about Sammy, Margie, more about Clint, and the well thought out waste disposal system he had noticed on the way past the horse barn.

"You did that?"

"Yeah, Grandpa and I dreamed it up together! We have several patents on the things we designed to make the whole deal work the way it should. The science was there, but the methods for making it marketable weren't, at least until we figured it out, because most people won't bother with something like that if they can't get some kind of return for their trouble, so its gonna have to grow some before it gets to be the next big thing, but it will, sooner or later. Think about all the mining we humans do to find the resources we use to make things now. Eventually, those resources will be in the landfills or floating in the middle of the ocean, so at least we know where to go looking for them when the real stuff in the ground starts getting too hard to come by." she explained her vision. "After our system was up and running and UBC came out to look at it, they gave us a grant to develop it even more to see how far we can take it commercially and still meet their ecological requirements. We are going to expand into the other recyclables because of the grant. They think we are on to something and are willing to invest in what we can do to explore our ideas. We are consulting with their professors to build an even more advanced one like ours out west, closer to campus. Grandpa went to look at a property a little ways down the road today that will let us double the size of our operation, at first, even larger when the time is right, and get it far enough away from the house not to upset Grandma!

Charlie talked for a while longer about the projections for her business until she suddenly realized, "I'm so sorry! You haven't said anything for a while. I am boring you, aren't I?"

"Quite the opposite! I actually like how passionate you are about everything. I was just thinking how perfect it is for you and Clint to work together like you do, and how much I admire your family for sticking together all of this time. I have never seen a family who loves each other as honestly as yours does. I would have wished for a family like yours when I was growing up, if I would have believed they even existed!"

"It isn't as perfect as you think it is, but I am blessed to be where I am, especially after everything I went through these last four years!" Noticing Ty's glance of curiosity, "That's one of the things we will spend time talking about this weekend. I know a lot more about your troubles than you know about mine, so, we are going to fix that, later," and she was glad to see him let it go for now with only a nod.

Charlie stood and held out her hand to pull Ty up when he said, "I'm so full I can hardly stand!" and laughed, pleased at the way the evening was turning out with such an amazing meal, in such a beautiful place, with such a wonderful man, and made a note to self that she needed to give the family's talented chef an extra-long hug the next time she saw her.

After taking a minute to gather the scraps and waste from the table to separate them into specific containers, "Let's put these things in the bear proof container up the hill a ways and when we get back we can start a fire so we can spend a little quality time together," she suggested.

"Bear proof container, all the way down here?" Ty asked.

"Yeah, we can gather these things out of the container when we leave and haul them back up to the compost bins later. Nothing goes to waste, or more like, _everything_ goes to be recycled, around here anyways! Almost everything we use has a purpose, even after most people think they are finished with them, so hopefully, we can help UBC find more efficient ways to put them to good use!"

"That's cool, but I thought our time together was already about as good as it gets!"

"Really? Well, I think I can prove to you that you're wrong about that!"

* * *

Ty thought about the grip leading him as firm for a woman, but remarkably soft and smooth for the hands on work he knew she did every day. He walked along beside her taking the long way around to the river and up the path beside the slow moving water to the gazebo which had an impressive stone fire pit in the center of its surrounding chaise lounge chairs, and Charlie pulled two of them close enough so they could lie side by side while Ty focused on getting a fire started in the pit.

"I built one of these once!" he told her.

"Oh? A fire pit? Did you use it a lot?" she asked.

"Yeah, I always thought it helped me relax while sitting beside it, and the marshmallows weren't bad either!" he chuckled.

Charlie held up an unopened bag of the camping essential, "Got 'em right here, and that ain't easy, keeping the brat out of them!"

"You missing her?" Ty asked when he thought he saw a wistful glimmer in her eyes at being away from her daughter for the evening.

"I know she's fine. There probably isn't anything she likes more than letting Grandpa and Gram fuss over her. I swear, they are spoiling her rotten!"

"I think you are exaggerating just a bit! That is as sweet a little girl as I have ever seen!"

"Remember those words, Ty Borden, because I will remind you of them someday…, and soon!" she laughed as she warned of his perceived assumptions of her daughter.

He answered her challenge, "We'll see about that!"

"I hope so!"

Ty brought two glasses and the bottle of wine resting in a bucket filled with melting ice to place it on a table within easy reach of where they sat. "We are gonna have to deal with this before the ice melts completely unless you like your first toast to be a warm one!"

She snuggled beside him from the middle of the paired up chairs. "We can't have that, can we!" and took the glass when he handed it to her.

"To wherever this evening takes us!" Ty proposed the toast.

"Wherever it takes us!" she reciprocated.

The pensive couple remained quiet beside the illuminating fire and let the romantic flickering glow under the roof of the gazebo lull them. The wine and soothing hush of the lazy river moving across countless rounded boulders scattered randomly about the riverbed enhanced the mood to settle in for the talk they were both looking forward to having, but were in awe of how much it could affect them as a couple from now on once they began to share all the details from their pasts and unravel the mysteries of a new significant other.

Charlie rested her cheek against Ty's chest, her fingers mindlessly tracing small circles across his smooth skin inside his shirt as she felt the beat of his heart under her outstretched palm, and he gently caressed the curls around her temple sending her into a deep tingling relaxation she hadn't felt since she was a little girl, recalling her mother's gentile loving touch.

Waiting to see which would be the first to initiate the conversation kept a longer silence between them than either had planned, the moment so perfect that neither wanted to end it too soon, but each of them appreciated the extra time to unwind a bit more and organize their thoughts before beginning what they knew would be an important step in their relationship.

"Are you serious about wanting to spend more time with Sammy?" Charlene began.

"Of course I am! Why would you think otherwise?" He was surprised by her doubt of his sincerity toward accepting her daughter as part of the package.

"Because most guys hesitate to go any farther in a relationship than getting to know the mother, they are all about that, and then, the idea of having to help raise someone else's kid turns them off faster than a New York minute!"

"When are you going to learn that I'm not _most guys_?" he refuted, feeling a little disappointed that she might still have reservations about his character.

"Oh, I already know that, Doc, but still, stepping into a life someone else started is asking a lot of someone to accept," she reasoned.

"I want you to know something," Ty responded in his most reassuring tone, "I can't tell you with absolute certainty what will happen today, tomorrow, or ten years from now. We both know how fast plans can change. But what I _can_ promise to you is that I am willing to take things one day at a time and give you my best shot to get to know you and Sammy, and for you guys to get to know me, and see where all of this leads us."

The certainty of his comment got her attention and she went with the flow of being more up front with her inner thoughts, "Ty, I know it's too early for you to be ready to fully trust somebody again after growing up like you had to, and especially after what happened with Amy," she rationalized, "I get that, but I want you to know that even with how I feel about you right now, I am willing to let things between us progress as slowly as we need them to, because I really do want to know if what we have together now can grow into something more, which, I think, is already pretty awesome as it is!"

"How you feel about me, right now?" he asked, wanting to clarify their versions of understanding their current status.

' _Shit, really smooth, Charlie!' Me and my big mouth_!' Knowing she had sprung a trap she couldn't get out of, the cautious woman raised her gaze up to meet his as they studied each other, beginning to communicate deeper meaning into unspoken thoughts and words through searching the others revealing eyes, "Maybe I should keep that to myself for a little while longer, because I don't think you are ready for the truth just yet," fearing that too much commitment from her this soon would only complicate matters even more and push him away.

His response came quickly, "If we can't be honest with each other, I think we would only be setting ourselves up to fail, and that's not fair to either one of us!"

She studied his gaze a while longer, and then decided to test his resolve, "You really want to know?"

"Yes, I do!" he nodded with conviction and gave her the determined look she already recognized as being honest and straight from his heart.

She leaned up against her elbow to better look the persistent man in the eye, "I am falling in love with you, Ty Borden! I know things are moving too fast, but I feel how I feel and there is not a damn thing I can do about it!"

Alarmed at the boldness of her own confession, Charlie instinctively held her breath at having risked any chance of a serious relationship being killed off before it even took root, waiting as he took his time pondering her straight forward revelation, and finally gasped for air as he leaned into a gentile lingering kiss.

Pulling away slowly, Ty searched the stunning reflection of golden flickers as they blazed across the effervescent blue of her eyes and made his own confession, "I don't always know the difference between what my head and heart are telling me these days, and I'd be lying if I said I don't have reservations about my being in the right frame of mind to move forward into a new relationship without carrying too much of my past around with me, but I can tell you this, if I were to say what I am feeling right now, I would say that I think about you all the time, and I can't wait to see you again the minute we are apart, and I would like nothing more than to spend whatever time it takes to try to figure you out, to figure Sammy and all of us out, together. I don't know if it's fair to say if that defines love for me yet because when I commit to someone I love, I intend for it to be for always, but, if you are willing to give me the chance to prove to you and to myself that I have what it takes to make this work, then I think we have a good shot at having much more between us than what we already have, which I happen think is pretty awesome, too!"

The words were like fireworks exploding inside Charlie's head, releasing her from fear of rejection and into the euphoria that new love brings to someone who has lost her heart to the man she believes is the one she has been waiting for to come into her life, and her arms wrapped tightly around Ty's neck as she buried her face into him and started to sniffle into his chest.

"Hey? Did I say something wrong? I'm sorry if…,"

"NO! Ty, you didn't say anything wrong," she interrupted, clinching his collar in her fist and lifting up to look him in the eye the best she could through welled up tears, "It couldn't have been more right! I love you! _There_ , I said it! And I'm going to say it a lot more! I don't care if it's too soon, or if we are taking a chance, because I love you and I want you and everybody else to know it!"

Ty raised himself onto his elbow to mirror her facing him, watching her resolve fade away as she began to submit to the desires she had been trying to restrain, and he used his free hand to roll her onto the pillow at her back and caught her off guard the second she landed with a kiss meant to chase away any doubts as to whether he was going to be all in with her wishes to take the next step together.

He took his time with teasing brushes over her soft lips, trailing kisses across her cheek and under her ear at her neck, his weight moving above her lessened by the support of his upper body with his arms. When Charlie opened her eyes again to explore the vastness of his green gaze a warm flood began to fill her with the love she could feel all the way to the tips of her extended toes, her fingers curling into his short hair and drawing him down into her neck as he continued to tease her. Deliberately prolonging each movement, Ty wanted to savor every second of the first time he tasted her and took notice of her reaction to his touch as he listened to the struggle for cadence in her breathing.

"Ty?" she whispered.

"Humm?" never letting up his torment.

"Nothing, I just wanted to hear your name," she cooed, starting to fall deeper into the whirling space she seemed to be floating into.

Minutes passed quickly into a void of space and time, and without even realizing the urgency of her movements, the rapt woman had moved herself into a viselike grip, her heels digging into the backs of her lover's thighs, pulling him as tightly as she could manage with well-toned legs, and the growing bulge pressing into her tightening mound was only sending her farther into her need with each determined thrust.

"If you want me to stop you'd better speak up now!" Ty offered one last life preserver to keep them from sinking any farther into their passion than they already had.

"Reach into the pocket in my jeans!" she demanded.

That was the last thing he expected her to say, but he wasn't thinking he should disobey an order that sounded so urgent and raised himself enough to comply with her request. He slipped the package out with his finger and thumb and held it up to see what he had retrieved, and had to stifle a chuckle to see that it was a strategically hidden condom.

"Should I feel like this was all part of a master plan?" he asked through a shaky smile.

"I was a girl scout, you know, always want to be prepared!"

"I think maybe you were in the Boy Scouts, instead!" pointing out the discrepancy of her reference.

"Shut up! And get these pants off me, now!"

It only took a few seconds for Ty to chase her writhing hips to unbutton her jeans and then hook his fingers around the waist of them and her underwear at once to slowly pull them down beyond the fullness of her bottom. Charlene raised her legs, straightening them to make one swift motion easier as the rapidly growing enthusiasm to get anything separating them out of the way took charge of her actions when she impatiently kicked them away with her feet.

She eyed his new jeans and remembered thinking that they would be easy to get undone in the heat of the moment, and a wry smile spread across her lips as she proved herself right, yanking the garments in one thrust from his waist and driving them all the way to his knees which were still supporting him. A massive hard on sprang up into her face causing her to realize that she had given no regard to his anatomy with the force of her actions and blurted, "Oh, geez, I'm sorry! It didn't hurt, did it?"

"I'm good!" was all he could think to say.

Suddenly remembering the condom, Charlene began to frantically fumble through the cushions of the loungers beneath her and Ty let her continue a few seconds longer than he probably should have before he laughed when he saw her frustration at not finding it. She noticed his amusement and looked up ready to unleash a little bit of her McCrary temper until he held the package up in front of her nose to show her that he still had it in his hand, but decided to deal with his ill-timed humor later.

The flustered woman snatched the package out of his hand and tore it open to pull the latex protection loose and study it for a few seconds to figure out which way was up, then looked up at Ty to see if he was still amused, and he was, so she set her jaw and grabbed his shaft like it was a club to strike him with and positioned the opening around the head before changing her mind to stop and admire his size.

' _Sshi…_ ,' she choked the comment trying not to give away her first impression. "You are just full of surprises, aren't you?" she recovered, looked up to see his attitude remained, and thrust her mouth around the swollen head and clamped her lips tight around him, giving him a little more of her teeth than she might have before the incident with the lost condom.

Charlie kept up her assault on his manhood, altering strokes with her hand and lips, letting him start to get carried away under her touch before she abruptly pulled away and again placed the condom at his tip. She had a slight struggle getting it to slip over his engorged mushroom, thinking one size larger would have been better, but nothing was going to stop her progress as she pinched the reservoir to preserve the place for his spent load and worked the rubber down along his shaft as far as it would go, dallying a palm under his balls and giving them a firm squeeze as a reward when she finished and then fell back on the pillows and waited.

Pulling away for a better position to start his ascent, Ty began by nibbling the insides of both calves and up to the bend of her knees, pushing them upward until she was totally exposed to anything he wanted to try next. He decided to continue the nips from her knees along both inner thighs, mixing teeth, warm lips, and random patterns with his tongue as he went, listening to her alluring sighs and keeping time with her swaying motion which encouraged him to see how far he could push her before taking them to the next level of being a couple.

Her head was spinning as Ty's lips sent shivers through her thighs and down to her toes before they shot upward and gathered in the depths of her abdomen. The tingling sensation radiated both pleasure and discomfort from the tightening grip increasing through her core. With every inch closer that her lover came to her swollen womanhood, the pressure building beneath the flaring full lips of her labia expanded even farther toward his advances.

Stopping for a moment to take her in, Ty was astounded by her natural beauty. Strong, statuesque, her features perfect in every way in his eyes, the sensual being she was becoming under his touch was proving to be more than he could continue to resist.

With one last kiss into the fleshy part of her upper thigh, Ty turned his attention to the place he knew to do the most to change everything between a man and a woman by making friends into lovers, and kissed the swollen clitoris protruding above her extended lips beaconing him to explore it. He took her into his lips and worked the hypersensitive bundle with his tongue causing Charlene to give her first unbridled moan, the reaction making him want to continue finding the places which caused her body to send signals above and beyond her ability to control them. A nibble at each of the ripened inner lips triggered a reactive thrust into his nose that would have hurt in a less urgent situation, but he played through the pain and took a note to be more careful in his approach.

Listening to Charlie's labored groans and attempts to catch her breath went beyond the last bit of resistance he could muster. One kiss at a time he worked his way up the undulating firmness of her belly until his cheek was nuzzled under her ample breast, deciding he had to spend just a bit more time drawing the erect nipple into his lips, experimenting between his playful tongue and firm suction to see that she responded favorably to them both before maneuvering up to look into her eyes again, this time seeing the luminescent blue ablaze with desire like the reflection of the fire he saw in them, ending his ploy to torture his prize with putting off the next inevitable step.

Charlie gasped and closed her eyes when she felt him brush against her sensitive inner lips and Ty waited until she recovered enough to open her eyes again before he moved, shifting his position to raise his hand, covering her cheek with a soft caress to help her focus into his eyes before he continued. When he had her gaze, the patient lover slowly pushed forward and felt her soft swollen flesh engulf his tip. Air escaped from her lungs and held her breathless as she stretched her legs wider to urge him to go on. Ty pushed again and let her gyrations take over, only having to apply enough pressure to let her movement work his hardness into her at her own pace.

The intense pleasure from the large shaft moving in to fill her was threatening to send her senses into overload. Charlie desperately latched to her lover with her short nails firmly planted into the cheeks of Ty's ass as she struggled to stay focused on trying to breathe when her lungs failed to cooperate on their own. Ty began to work into a slow rhythm to match her writhing hips, careful to prolong the feeling as much as either of them could tolerate, and spent a few blissful minutes working her between bursting forth with passion and regaining a semblance of control. When he tried to withdraw to give a forceful thrust she suddenly clamped down with her fingernails and buried them deeper into his flesh, his reaction thrusting himself into her all the way to her cervix which lit off a violent surge of convulsions throughout her entire body. She clung to Ty as tightly as her strength would allow from spent arms slung underneath his biceps across his shoulders and trembling thighs pulling her heels hard into his legs, pinning him against her from underneath until he had no chance of escaping the moment and surrendered all control of his pent up passion when he felt the overwhelming pulsations grasping at his erection from inside her.

Immeasurable time passed until their bodies relaxed enough to give them back their senses, and when his vision cleared Ty looked down to see his lover still lost in the bliss that sent her off to another place somewhere out of her body, holding still for a few seconds until another wave shuddered its way from her grasp of his manhood to her toes which were curled into a tight knot against him, and newfound experience told him that he should remain still until he was certain she was finished.

"Are you OK?" Ty asked when she finally opened her eyes.

Charlie's lips rounded to draw in a few deep breaths of much needed fresh air and after she got enough wind in her lungs, "No, I wouldn't call that OK, at all!"

' _What the hell is it going to take, then,'_ he thought _, 'because I don't have any idea how we're ever going to top that!_ '

"OK would be like…, riding over Niagara Falls in a barrel and saying, ' _Yeah, that was kind of OK_!' This was _not_ like that! This was like being shot out of a giant cannon bare ass naked and circling around the moon a couple of times and free falling into Niagara Falls and going over the edge without the barrel! _That_ kind of OK!"

Ty was glad to see her sense humor had returned because he wasn't sure he could survive her retribution if it had only been _OK_! He rolled onto his back and Charlie reached over the side of the lounger for the optimistically placed blanket she had put there earlier in the afternoon. She unfurled the thick warming cloth and spread it over them to cover their naked sweating bodies while they continued to recover and snuggled into the same position she held before all of this started with her cheek against his bare chest. This time his heart was audible to her ear as it pressed against him, and she listened as it slowed until they drifted off to a deep, peaceful sleep, dead to the world until morning light would wake them.

 _To be continued_


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

"Grandpa! Ahmed has taken Amy! Or, she left with him! I don't know…! But, she's just gone! She isn't answering her phone and she needs help Grandpa, and I don't know what to do!"

The confused older man responded the frantic caller, "Lou, hold on! Calm down! What are you talking about? Ahmed has taken Amy? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Ahmed came driving up to the ranch out of the blue to see Amy! All I know is somehow she went from slapping him backwards at first sight to agreeing to leave with him in only a few minutes time! It was completely insane!"

"You are telling me that Amy hit the prince because she was mad at him when he showed up, forgave him, and then decided to leave with him, just like that?"

"Well, there's more to it than that," Lou admitted. "Somehow, Ahmed twisted the argument between Amy and him into an argument between me and Amy. It happened so fast I didn't even realize it until it was over, and Amy was gone! Grandpa, she doesn't know what she is doing! There is no way she would have made a decision like that, at least not before! He convinced her to leave with him without so much as getting packed! She just got in his truck and left. She didn't even say goodbye!"

"Well, that doesn't sound like Amy, not at all! Do you have any idea where they might be headed?"

"Yes! He said something about if she would leave with him that they would be taking off by five o'clock!" Lou screamed into the phone as she tried to think of any details that might help. "I think they are going to his plane at the airport which is waiting for them, probably to fly back to Europe!"

"We'll see about that! Nobody's goin' anywhere until I get a damn good explanation," Jack retorted and turned away from the receiver to answer Lisa's harried pokes with a rigid finger at his arm.

"It's Amy!" he filled in his wife to the unusual tone of the conversation. "She has apparently left the ranch with Ahmed and they are leaving in his jet at five this afternoon for who knows where! I have to get to the airport to try to stop them, now!"

He returned to the phone and Lou, "OK, Lisa are going to try to come up with a plan to see if we can stop that plane from taking off! I don't know what the hell I can do about it, but if I have to, I'll run my truck under the wheels of that damn plane if I can get to it! Oh…, Lisa is asking if she has her passport?"

"No, I don't see how she could have her passport. She didn't even go into the house before she left!"

"OK, maybe that's something! I gotta go, Lou, and keep trying to call her! Maybe you can get through and make her think about whatever it is she is doing!" Jack suggested.

"I will! Be careful Grandpa!" Lou pushed end call and broke down into a hysterical crying surge of frustration fueled by fear. ' _What the hell can she be thinking?_ _Is she so damaged that she can't control her emotions anymore_? _I need to call Barbara! Maybe she will know something that might help!_ '

Dr. Bilsen listened to her agitated friend describe Amy's situation and offered a pointed bit of advice, "Amy did _not_ need to be subjected to that kind of turmoil as emotionally unstable as she is right now! You need to do whatever you can to make sure she doesn't get out of the country! If she went willingly, you may not be able to stop her, if she has chosen to leave with the prince, and if he has diplomatic status, as I would assume he probably does, then Amy may not even need her passport wherever she is going…, to get to his villa in France, for instance, and wait there for her papers to arrive after she applies for replacements."

"I'm so sorry, Bar! The argument happened so fast! It was over before I even realized it had started!"

"I know, Lou. The prince has apparently been trained to be a shrewd negotiator and has developed his skill to help him get people to do what he wants them to do. Amy is in a precarious situation, Lou. She can't afford to walk out on the doctors she has waiting to try and help her!"

Lou replied, "I realize that, but we have to find her first, before we can do anything else!"

"Find her, Lou! I will see how I can use my status as one of her doctors to arrange a plea to the authorities about her ability to make life changing decisions in her current state. I have some lawyer friends to help with advising my angle on legal matters. It might make the difference in whether the prince can get them to let Amy leave the country, assuming you can even get to her to try and stop them!"

"Amy is going to be _so_ pissed at me!" Lou worried.

"Being pissed at you is the least of her problems, Lou!" Bar responded. "She may not fully understand this right now, but leaving without following up on that treatment for her trauma could make her condition much worse than it has to be, maybe even irreversible! So _find her_!"

* * *

"You never had the chance to explain how you found Aleah and Rasha," Amy realized as she began to reign in her temper and think about the reason Ahmed had come to see her in the first place. "Are they OK? Where did you find them? Who took them? Where are they now?"

"I knew you would be anxious to hear the news, Amy! That is why I came to see you with such urgency! I just received word from my head of security this morning that the girls had been found, safe and sound, hiding with relatives!"

"You mean, like they just ran away? I know what I saw, Ahmed, and it didn't look _safe and sound_ to me!"

"There is more that you do not know, Amy! It seems as though Anwar was involved romantically with both of the girls! He apparently promised each of them that he would marry them and when the girls discovered his indiscretions they each confronted him for an answer."

Trying to make sense of the confusing news, Amy interrupted her employer's account of the incident, "But, that doesn't explain why I saw Rasha beaten by the mystery man at the stables and carried away by those two thugs! So, you are saying that the mystery man was Anwar? And if it was, what are you doing about it?"

Acknowledging his passenger's confusion, Ahmed glanced toward Amy and began to explain, "Rasha was the more vocal of the two girls. She threatened to go to her family, which has some financial influence in my country, and tell them about Anwar. Anwar has aspirations of a high ranking position in our government. There are certain people who are assigned to look after him and his interests to make sure nothing complicates his rise in power. Rasha was a threat to him, therefore those people took her away to be with her family where they were all convinced, with some sort of compensation, I am sure, as an incentive to keep quiet about the incident!"

Amy processed the information and continued to try and lay the story out into some form of understanding, "So, what happened to Aleah? Why was she last seen at the villa in France?"

"Aleah apparently confronted Anwar that night at the villa. As far as we can determine, Anwar rejected her and she packed up her things and went back home to be with her family. They also would have been given the same compensation as Rasha to keep quiet. That is why we had to go looking for them, because they were under an agreement not to go to the authorities."

"Agreement? That's what you would call it?" she questioned the informality of such a serious set of events.

"It is not uncommon in situations like this, Amy. A lot is at stake for people of power, to themselves, and to their people. Sometimes it is best to keep the public, and the people who would use the indiscretions against them, completely out of it!"

"You never said what you were doing about Anwar…. Is he being arrested for what he did?"

"I am afraid there is more to it than that, Amy. This is a very sensitive situation, as I hope you can understand, and there are people in our country who will decide what to do with Anwar for his inappropriate behavior. As a matter of fact, that is why I am on my way back to France so soon after arriving in Canada. I had planned on coming to see you and make my appeal to your decision against managing the royal team in a few days, but this news changed my plans and I knew I had to see you today!"

Unsure that the explanation was meeting her satisfaction, Amy rested her head against the seat and thought for a minute before she asked, "How common of a practice is it, Ahmed? If someone like Anwar has people looking after his best interests, I can only assume that you have them as well. Is there anything else I should know before I get on that jet with you?"

"Of course not, Amy!" he snapped, "I will see to it that you are safe and have everything you need to be happy! You will see!"

Deciding to let it go for now, Amy sank back into the soft leather to think about accepting closure of her former life as she watched it pass farther into the distance. Brilliant green and yellow fields stretched all the way to the horizon as they rushed by her window and Amy couldn't help but wonder if she would ever see these cherished hills and the people who lived here again. Churning emotions caught the uprooted cowgirl squarely in the middle of new doubts, both in the vast unknown she was headed toward and in the life she had planned to keep here in Alberta but suddenly committed to leaving behind as nothing more than her most disappointing failure, as she now saw it.

Quietly riding through the foothills gave Amy time to deal with the reality that she had finally alienated herself from her home and everyone she thought she loved all in one hasty decision. She already regretted the harsh exchange with Lou, now that she had cooled down a bit, and knew she at least owed her sister a call to apologize for the outburst, but Ahmed had raised a valid point. The talented young woman was tired of being treated as a helpless little girl by everyone at Heartland. The time had come to demand the respect she deserved as an accomplished horse trainer who was perfectly capable of living her life as she chose, not the way they would have her to live as some forever dependent adolescent horsey girl.

A quick check of her phone showed it to be inoperable from not having been recharged today. The urge to call out to Ahmed and have him stop at one of the many convenience stations alongside the road rose with every one they passed. A little voice in her head seemed to be whispering to her that she should get out of the prince's vehicle to phone the ranch and beg for someone to come and take her back home, but the struggle to overcome her natural stubbornness and fear of final rejection from the only lifeline tying her to her past kept her silent as she rode in the seat next to the unnervingly contented driver. The troubled passenger couldn't help noticing the contrast between their moods. For however distraught she was becoming, Ahmed seemed to be reveling in the new prospects for a brighter future, in his mind, at least.

* * *

Lisa squinted at her new phone, holding it up to her face after talking to Scott back at the clinic in Hudson, as the couple reached the outskirts of Calgary driving north on the Deerfoot Trail toward the airport. "He says to go around the loop on the back side of the main terminal on the Airport Trail for only about a Kilometer then right onto 19th, then right again on Aero Rd. That's where he, Amy, and Ty went to meet Ahmed's plane when Adrian first called them to come and look at his horse after that rough flight."

Jack thought for a second, then asked, "Did he give you the address, so you can put it in that fancy phone of yours, because I don't know a damn thing about getting around in that place!"

"Putting it in right now…, OK, were good! Got it!" she assured him.

"What time is it, Lis? Gotta be gettin' close on time!"

"Four thirty eight! We need to hurry, if we are going to convince anyone to listen to us in time to stop that plane from taking off!"

An apprehensive guard rushed out of the security building holding up his hand to urge the speeding old Chevy truck to slow down as it approached the closed gate.

"Name's Jack Bartlett. I am here to try and make contact with my granddaughter who should have gone through this gate not long ago with Prince Ahmed al Saeed. His plane is supposed to be here close by. Amy Fleming! That's who I am looking for! Have you seen her?" Jack pleaded, hoping that any familiarity might open the guard up to reason. "It's really important that I see her, now!"

"I can't just go in there and ask the prince and his crew to stop the plane because some old guy says he wants to talk to his granddaughter! You need to be more specific! What makes you say that it is so important that you contact her?" he asked, doubting the old man as being any more than someone chasing a rebellious runaway relative. "Is she of age to make the decision to be on that plane?"

"Well, yeah, she's old enough, but I have her passport!" he lied. "She forgot it when she left the house! Can you help me find her?"

"I am afraid she is going to have to deal with her passport issues when they reach their destination, Sir. They left the hangar a few minutes ago and it is too late to bring them back now, because that black and gold jet on the runway ready for takeoff is the one you are looking for!"

Feeling the strength escaping her husband, Lisa put her arm around Jack's waist as they watched the jet spool up its engines and begin to roll down the runway. Before either of them could accept that they had missed the last opportunity to help the loved one they both feared would regret her decision to leave, given time, the plane lifted its wheels above the smooth surface and broke the last tangible connection between them, rising higher and higher until the diminishing black dot was swallowed up into a deceivingly beautiful Alberta blue sky.

 _To be continued_


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Her thoughts were heavy on the little town nestled in the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies, long since out of sight after being lost in the shadows between her and the beautiful golden glow of the setting sun, and Amy had been wrestling with a nagging attack of homesickness as the security of the mountains called out to her like an anchor reeling away to the ties of her past after the plane was airborne, keeping watch on the jagged horizon to the west as long as she could make them out though the window of the royal jet. It had been her whole world until a few months ago. Every hope or dream she ever considered had made it the place she would grow up, raise her family, and live the rest of her days as a cowgirl on a ranch with the family that she loved, working with horses like her mother and six generations of ancestors before her, and would be blessed by the love they shared every day as she lived out her life.

Ahmed had tried to keep his last minute passenger company for the first few minutes of the flight, but soon realized her attention was elsewhere and that she would rather be left alone while adjusting to the radical changes she was facing. The prince decided to retreat to his personal quarters at the rear of the aircraft to begin preparation for an urgent meeting he was to attend in his home country. The elders in charge of making decisions concerning his pending leadership role in their government had summoned him to drop whatever he was doing in Canada and return to his capital as soon as possible.

' _They must have finally reached a decision! All of the effort to change their opinion of me and prove myself a responsible leader has gained their confidence! My plan has finally succeeded!'_ he mused into the mirror beside his bed, imagining his triumphant acceptance of his country's crown.

Four hours in the air was more than enough time for Amy to absorb the reality that she was flying seven thousand six hundred and twenty meters above the eastern edge of her homeland and committed to redefining who she was and where she belonged, to another place besides the only home she had ever known and with people to whom she would have to reaffirm herself worthy of their acceptance.

Reclining in the soft leather seat, Amy listened to a country channel she had found on the jet's state of the art entertainment system's satellite radio through earbuds brought to her by the flight's hostess and absently stared into the black void outside her window, the only sign of anything earthly being the occasional light of a lonely ship sailing the open waters of Hudson Bay and a sprinkling of civilization beyond the shore as they crossed the upper regions of Quebec.

Amy was lost to a deep reflection of where she was and how she got here. The journey had softened the unexplainable outburst of anger well enough to lose its advantage over her emotions, regrets and a slight tinge of fear beginning to creep into its place as she came to grips with her abrupt decision to leave behind her home and everyone that mattered to her without hesitation. The more the confused refugee delved into why she had felt the need to suddenly lash out against her sister, the more she questioned her own substance. _'Who am I, deep down inside? Am I really the kind of person who could walk away from the people I am supposed to love so easily? Lou didn't deserve to be blasted for trying to look out for me, even though her annoyingly condescending attitude gets the best of me sometimes, any more than Ty deserved the way I dumped him. Maybe it wasn't them? Maybe it was because I am really a horrible, selfish person now that I'm not the innocent little horsey girl who grew up on a ranch, who doesn't understand what love is or how to appreciate it like others seem to be able to do?'_

Although Lou's way of taking charge over her little sister's life at times had festered into a grudge that Amy understood and admitted to raise its ugly head from time to time, she supposed all families had situations to sort out among themselves in order to get along, but even she was shocked at how a subconscious resentment had leapt out of her so forcefully into the open without her usual restraint.

Imagining what Lou had told the rest of the family about their argument, Amy knew to expect a phone call soon because her grandfather was not one to let something like this go unanswered, or her father who seemed to be trying to overcompensate his influence in her life because of guilt left over from abandoning his five year old daughter for ten years after he and her mother divorced, or Lou for the necessary sisterly makeup talk. The newly independent woman needed to figure out how she was going to navigate those conversations when the time came, after she had accumulated the courage to face them, even if it would be from thousands of kilometers away and with the built in safety of an 'End Call' button to push if the talk got too to be too much for her to handle.

A TV monitor located on the wall separating passengers from the cockpit kept her informed of the exact location of their flightpath which reminded her of watching sand slip through an hourglass, slowly moving from one place to another, and the only way back being to turn everything upside down and start the whole process over again which she could no longer see happening.

A tap on her on her shoulder shocked the daydreaming passenger from being lost to her thoughts, "I am so sorry, Miss Fleming!" the familiar hostess apologized, "I did not intend to startle you like that! I just wanted to ask you if there is anything you need? A drink perhaps, or I would be happy to get you something to snack on until you are ready to retire for the evening. We still have a long flight ahead of us."

"Yes, we do! Umm, maybe a glass of wine, please. Do you know what the local time will be when we get there?" the weary traveler asked, trying to sort out the difference of her body and mind thinking it would be the wee hours of the morning and get a plan together for what would actually be the middle of her tomorrow when they made it to their destination.

The well informed hostess smiled and replied, "We should be arriving in Paris about 10:45 a.m., Miss Fleming, so it would probably be a good idea to try and rest while you can, assuming you can sleep through the noise coming from the royal living quarters! I think the prince has some business to attend to in the city, based on some of the instructions he has been shouting into his phone!" she smiled at her easy going passenger, a twinkle in her eyes at sharing a little more information than she might otherwise divulge to the arrogant assholes she was accustomed to dealing with on Ahmed's royal flights.

Amy had not noticed Ahmed's conversations due to the earbuds and music, but now she could see him at the rear of the hallway past the small enclosed rooms intended for passengers to rest during long flights tossing his free hand frantically around his head as he spoke into his phone. She could not understand a word of his native language, other than the few work related references she picked up from Aleah and Rasha during her last tour with the team, but his animated reactions to the conversation indicated that he was not pleased with the person unfortunate enough to be holding the other end of the interaction.

A few minutes longer at trying to ignore the princes' rant had Amy picking up her wineglass and unplugging her earbuds to carry them back to the room prepared for her by the hostess she had become friendly with in the many times she had been aboard the royal jet during the first tour. The plane's entertainment system had something to offer everyone who used it. After choosing a radio station playing top forty songs to drown the background noise coming from the rear of the plane she fell into the comfortable bed hoping the distraction would take her mind off Ahmed's tirade and the personal troubles that tormented her.

Finding relaxation for the first time all day, Amy began to ponder the irony of lying perfectly still in her bed inside a vessel traveling in excess of eight hundred kilometers per hour at over seven and a half kilometers above the earth. If only some of the stuck up kids from high school who spent their days at Hudson High looking down their noses at her could see the poor horsey girl now! Her mind skipped across her childhood searching for the best days to remember, then drifted to memories of growing up on the ranch.

It was a much simpler way of existing for a young girl than the lives of most of the urban dwellers Amy knew and she did not like having so many parts of her current life out of sorts at the same time. Her family situation was up in the air with her having no idea of where she faired in their eyes now, but she could imagine their disappointment in her. The marriage she had been planning and should have been coming up this fall was left in shambles, having deeply hurt the one person she had come to share everything with, or almost everything, at least more than she had ever shared with anyone else. Amy never understood before how valuable it had been during her childhood to simply belong somewhere, blessed with people who loved her and did so much to look after her best interests regardless if she appreciated it at the time or not. Where did she belong now, exactly, and with whom?

There would have to be a new beginning, she realized, something to hold on to in the new life she was facing, but Amy had no real idea how to make such a broad readjustment to everything she had become accustomed to as normal. She was a new person, a woman of her own on the verge of a wonderful future, and she determined that today was the first day of the rest of her life, the past was in the past, and whatever tomorrow brought, she would deal with it just fine, just before exhaustion finally put an end to what would surely be one of her longest and most unsettling days.

* * *

Ty was the first to wake when the new day started to come alive around, the couple still entwined underneath the canopy of the gazebo. At first he was confused by the resistance against his chest when he tried to stretch, but smiled when Charlene squinted through sleepy eyes getting used to the morning light. "Hey! How do you feel this morning?" he asked.

"I feel…, I don't know how to describe the way I feel right now, only that this is a pretty good place to be!" she giggled. "How about you?

"Well, I would be great, except for my nose is hurting like hell!" he made a show of pitifully rubbing the sore projection with his fingers. "I think you came pretty close to breaking it!"

"Just goes to show that you need to watch where you put those lips, Mister, because I can't be responsible for my actions if they keep going to those places!" she countered without missing a beat and shared their first outright laugh over something so personal between them.

Not knowing what he should say next, Ty rested his head back against the pillow, "I could stay here, like this, all day!"

"That's another one of the differences between you guys and us women," she said as she propped herself with an elbow to get a better look. "I could stay here all day, too, if I didn't have to pee so damn bad!" and they laughed again. "Now, how about you be a good boyfriend and find me some clothes to put on so I can go up to the cabin and use the bathroom."

"We're in the middle of the woods! Who is going to see you, the little animals?" he teased.

Charlie pleaded, "Maybe! But I don't really want to take the chance that someone could see me naked, is all!"

"Maybe _I_ want to see you naked!" he pushed his luck a little further.

"If you behave yourself, you can count on it!" she countered with a look that suggested she was no longer kidding.

"'Nuff said!" and he threw back the covers and moaned at the early morning chill against his bare skin. "You owe me!"

Ty scratched at his stubble and figured Charlie had been up in the cabin for around thirty minutes. He had started to wonder what could have happened to her when the rejuvenated woman stepped out the side door onto the deck and yelled, "Breakfast! Come and get it!"

' _Damn, she's perfect!'_ he thought and wasted no time in climbing up the steps to the cabin to see what she had managed to throw together for a meal.

When he entered the open interior of the cabin his nostrils flared to draw in the wonderful smells of a country breakfast with all the fixin's, "You really outdid yourself, didn't you?" he said.

"Well, you kind of earned it, with that mashed up nose and all! I just wanted to show you how much I appreciated last night and give you something to restore your strength, because you never know when you might need it! Now, come over here and kiss the chef!" she commanded as she leaned impishly over the countertop separating them.

' _I could get used to this!'_ he thought as he approached her. _'How the hell can she look that good this early in the morning after a spending a night out in the middle of the woods, and then wake up to feed me the next morning like she wants to keep me around!'_

Packing a picnic basket with the nicely prepared meal, Charlie handed it to Ty for him to do his part and carry it down to the river for them to enjoy the view from the gazebo while they had breakfast. They each made small talk as they ate, asking and answering lighter questions so as not to disrupt such a perfect start to a new day.

When they finished Charlie stood up and started to give her guest instructions for a proper cleanup, but Ty interrupted by holding up his hand saying, "I know, up the hill, to the bear proof bin, each little thing in its own hole for the preservation of mankind!" and gave her a look that dared her to contradict his growing knowledge of her habits.

Charlie raised an eyebrow at his making light of her commitment to recycle, but knew it was only his playful nature poking fun to see if he could get a rise out of her. "That's right, Doc! Maybe there is hope for you yet!"

Ty took a few minutes upon returning from his short hike up the trail to finish tidying up the space around the gazebo. It was such a beautiful place and he wanted it to look the way it should for anyone who would see it next.

"You are such a good little camper! I can see a lot of potential in you!" Charlie yelled from the deck after watching him fuss over which cushion matched which lounger.

All Ty could do was shrug his shoulders, "We made a mess out here last night. Somebody has to cover up the evidence! Maybe you'd better get yourself ready to catch us some lunch!"

As the smiling beauty walked down the steps toward him, "What do you mean, Doc? I have enough stuff up in the cabin to last us at least until tomorrow morning!"

"That may be true, but look at those fish out there in the river, just daring us to throw them a hook!"

"Yeah, but I can think of more romantic things to do other than fishing," she argued.

"That's just because you haven't done it right!" he countered. "I saw Clint's rods hanging up in the shed. The look like they need a workout, just like you!"

"Workout? You think doing a little fishing is a workout?"

"If we do it right, it is!"

She pursed her lips and considered another argument for a way to divert his attention, but the look on his face crushed any opposition she might have used to push back, "OK, what do we need to do this?"

"C'mon! I'll show you!"

She was sure she looked like a cartoon while waddling through thigh high water toward the spot Ty had directed her to. "Here?" she yelled.

"Yeah, but if you keep yelling at the top of your lungs like that, you may as well plan on sandwiches for lunch!" he scolded his reluctant fishing buddy.

"Sorry!" she turned up her palms as she shrugged and acknowledged her lack of concern for the anglers' book of etiquette.

"Maybe if I told you how cute you look in those waders, you might get a little more interested in this whole fishing thing?" Ty laughed at her pouting and thought she looked a lot like a twelve year old Georgie when she was told to do a chore she wanted to get out of.

"Ha-Ha! And aren't you supposed to be keeping quiet, Jack Hanna?"

Ty shook his head. "Jack Hanna is more into zebras than fish, but I'll bet he could appreciate a nice trout on his plate for lunch this afternoon!"

After managing to catch three nice keepers in less than twenty minutes, Ty began to pay more attention to Charlie as she cast into the wrong part of the river and he could tell that her frustration was growing at being out fished. He began to make his way closer to the struggling angler and when he got close enough warned her, "Hold up a minute! I don't need that hook barbed up in my ass!"

"You keep talkin' and I'll give you a hook, alright!" she grinned and squinted one eye in defeat, showing him a doubled up fist. "I guess I'm not very good at this, as if I couldn't have told you that before you made me come all the way out here in the middle of the river with these hippo boots on!"

"Here! Let me show you something," moving close behind his reluctant student to offer a pointer or two about the error of her strategy. "Your casting is not the reason you aren't catching any fish. You are actually pretty good at it, for a girl!" he said and chuckled to himself at knowing the competitive button would be the one to push to get her attitude going in the right direction when he felt her flinch and flash a sideways glance at his comment. "It's where you are aiming. Look," he put his cheek next to hers and pointed, "see the way the water slows and stays calm as it comes around that log, and it is kind of in the shade? They like places like that. See if you can get the bait just beyond that spot and bring it past that hole as you reel it back to you, and let's see what happens."

"Fish don't eat hot dogs! You're dreaming if you think one of those fish is going to give up a nice shady spot in the river with all of that fishy stuff they like to eat just floating around them everywhere to chase a chunk of what we are going to wish we had saved for lunch when this doesn't work," she mumbled.

"But, it's a _special_ hotdog! I did some stuff to make them like it! Just try it…, _please_! You might be surprised," he whispered into her ear and playfully nibbled the lobe to get her interested in following his lead.

"Fuck the fish!" she said as she suggestively pushed against her instructor and wiggled her hippo wader covered butt against him. "Let's go back to the cabin and make out!"

"Behave yourself, or we are going to starve! Just do like I told you, for once, and see what happens!" he said with an encouraging kiss to her cheek.

Just as he expected, Charlie tossed the hook perfectly where he suggested for her to aim and before he could even appreciate her precision the line snapped taught with a firm pull from under the churning water and the excited fisherman yelped with delight at her sudden upturn of luck.

"Easy! Don't yank the rod or he'll snap the line and get away! Easy! Easy!" Ty hollered at seeing the need to reign his pupil in before her skyrocketing enthusiasm went higher than the rating of the line. He put his arms around the jubilant woman to hold her still and together they brought in the largest trout he thought he'd ever seen out in the wild after a battle most fishermen would die to describe as more than another fish tale they told to their buddies at the bar on Tuesday nights.

With the prize safely in his net, Ty raised the granddaddy of a trout up in front of his squealing student and took a moment to appreciate the beautiful joy in her face as she reeled in her success. "Don't move!" she ordered as she handed him her rod to fetch her phone out of her shirt pocket and unwrap it from a sealed sandwich bag she had put it in just in case she fell in the water. Ty was amazed as she reached into the net and struggled to hold up her slimy prize.

"Shit! Charlie! Don't drop him!"

Without responding to his warning the excited angler stretched as far as she could, "Say cheese!" and snapped a selfie of the two of them in the middle of the river with the catch of all time proudly hung between them from a gill at the end of her finger. "We're not eating him!" she barked as she put the fish back into the safety of the net which Ty had positioned underneath the fish just in case. "Grandpa has one mounted over the fireplace that looks like this one's runt of a cousin! He's going right up there beside his, so the next time somebody fires off one of those _'Pretty good for a girl'_ remarks, I'm going to march him where he can look at this one up there beside that little minnow of Grandpa's and rub his nose in it!"

"I think I have created a monster!" Ty chuckled and noted the comeback to his earlier review of her casting techniques. "So, if we can't eat the fish big enough to feed both of us all by himself, I guess we had better put him on a stringer and get back to work, because now I'm getting hungry!"

Ty began cleaning up the table by sorting the scraps and trash after one of the best meals he could ever remember. The fresh trout were beyond fantastically delicious, probably because of the experience he shared with the newest fly fishing enthusiast in Canada while catching their feast, and the atmosphere next to the river seemed to make everything taste that much better.

Charlie's day had been made and she couldn't hide the way she was feeling about her time spent at the river this weekend, especially as she continued to dance around the deck at the cabin and raising her hands to show the size of her prize catch every time she noticed he was watching her. She was a true fisherman now, he was sure, because he could swear that the gesture kept exaggerating the length a little bit more every time she showed him the move, and he would love to hear the way she was describing the victory to her loved ones back at the house as she boasted into her phone.

Hiking up to the recycling bin and back down the hill gave Ty a few minutes to think about his luck taking a dramatic turn for the better. He hadn't felt so much contentment or such a carefree time in his life! Everything seemed to be happening so easily, without the drama of holding back secrets or hidden resentment.

When he stepped onto the deck of the cabin Charlie met Ty at the door with a helmet. "You are gonna need this if you are going to take me for a ride in the buggy! There's some awesome trails I've been wanting to explore, are you up for it?"

"And I thought this day couldn't get any better!" she smiled as he snatched the helmet from her hands and grabbed the giggling woman around the waist to give her the kiss he had been holding back all morning. "Let's get to it, then, because we're burning daylight!"

 _To be continued  
_


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

"Amy! Are you awake? Amy! It is six o'clock in the evening! If you are ever going to get over the jet lag you need to get out of bed and come to dinner! Are you not hungry?" Ahmed shouted through the door hoping to lure his house guest from the seclusion of her room. She had taken refuge shortly after the long journey across the ocean and another half-four ride from Paris–Le Bourget Airport, famous for many historic footnotes such as being the site of the first female being issued a pilot's license, or the landing site of Charles Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight in 1927, and Adolph Hitler's coming here to tour his latest conquest in 1940 in the midst of the last World War, all of which would have impressed the weary traveler a lot more if exhaustion had not stolen the energy it took to appreciate the historic significance of such things.

The disturbance persisted and Amy finally gave up on returning to the nothingness of sleep that had grudgingly overtaken her, "OK! I'm getting up!" she shouted at thinking he was acting like a childishly obsessive host within her groggy haze somewhere between being awake and not, and rolled over to her side with a tug of a pillow over her head trying and ignore the determined knocking at her door.

Still physically and emotionally depleted from the harrowing first twenty four hours of her new beginning, Amy had been drained into deep sleep, and no matter how the progression of so many time zones affected her presence in the new day, resisted waking up before her body and mind told her that it was time.

"Good! I have some new clothes for you to wear, if you will just open the door so I can give them to you!"

Not wanting to be seen in her just awakened condition, Amy tossed the covers aside and tried to steady her ungainly retreat behind the safety of the adjoining door. She desperately wanted to hide her tangled damp hair stuck to a sweaty cheek around puffy bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothes she hadn't had the energy to shed before she crashed onto bed. "Give me a second! Let me get in the bathroom and you can just lay them on the bed, OK?"

Waiting for as long as he thought it would take for his guest to move into the next room and keep her privacy, Ahmed entered the guestroom and looked for a place to lay the new garments, opting instead to hang them in the closet because of the disarray of the burrowed up nest she had made of the bed. He noticed the bare closet and walked closer to the door of the bathroom and said, "Amy, tomorrow, after you have rested, I will have one of the staff who knows her way around town to assist you in shopping for a new wardrobe."

"Thank you, Ahmed! That is so nice of you!"

"Well, since I dragged you away from…, _that place,_ with only the clothes on your back that is the least I can do! Now, hurry and get ready! I will be waiting in my den downstairs!"

"Thank you!" she shouted. "Be there as soon as I can make myself presentable!"

Ahmed couldn't help but notice the crack in the open door tempting him to think how easy it would be to push it open and invite himself into the shower that she had just started, but decided she was probably not ready for that much aggressiveness just yet, shook his head to bring his thoughts back to a more gentlemanly behavior, and forced himself through the door into the hallway and down the stairs before he changed his mind.

After she had finished drying off and wrapping her long blonde hair in a fresh towel, Amy let curiosity get the best of her and peeked into her room to see that all was clear and walked over to the rumpled bed anticipating to find her new clothes. When she discovered they were not there the puzzled guest looked around and noticed something new hanging in the closet, the only other garments besides a fluffy white robe that she took off the hanger and wrapped her naked body in to stay warm while she scrutinized the first addition to her new wardrobe.

Her eyes lit up at seeing the designer blouse cut from black silk and coordinating skirt which obviously did not come off the rack at "Splash of Fashion" in Calgary where she splurged if she wanted something fancier than the normal attire she usually bought at Maggie's, Lou's store in Hudson, or the Wal-Mart in Okotoks for her everyday needs. It was comparable to the ones she had seen the princes' wealthy guests wearing when they had gone out to fancy dinners with the team. She missed a few of the more expensive items she had picked up all around Europe during her travels and would probably never see again because she had left them at Heartland in her hasty exit with Ahmed.

A twinkle of light caught her eye on the dresser and her jaw dropped at realizing the opened box presented a new pair of diamond earrings and the one beside it had a matching necklace that she bet cost more than her annual income would have been back home on the ranch. ' _The ranch!_ '

The thought fell on her like a landslide. ' _I still haven't heard from anyone at home!'_ Amy made her way across the thick woven carpet under bare feet to check the phone beside her bed, thankful that she had at least thought to plug it into the charger she bought on the way home from airport before she fell asleep.

After waiting for the revived lifeline to the world to boot up, Amy was relieved to see the blue flash indicating that someone had tried to contact her and let a nervous exhale pass through her pinched lips before scrolling through necessary menus to find the expected onslaught of messages.

' _I am so, so sorry for what I said, Amy! I did not mean those things and I wish more than anything that I could take them back! Please come home and talk to me! Please!'_

Tears from watery eyes slid down Amy's cheeks knowing her sister meant what she had texted because she felt exactly the same way. It was the first of fifteen messages Lou had sent, ranging from pleas to her little sister to come back home to the ones she obviously sent after she figured it was too late to stop Amy from leaving.

Lou's last message was the longest, seeming to concede to the fact that her little sister was really gone, _'Amy take care of yourself, please, for all of us who love you here at home. I know we parted on a bad note, but I hope you can find it in your heart to believe me when I say we all love you, I love you, and I never meant those things I said to you when we argued. I don't even know where those words came from! We all wish the best for you and hope you find happiness, but you need to take care of yourself and make sure you find a doctor and continue to seek help with recovering from your injuries. I overheard Ahmed promise you that he would help you to see the best doctors available, so hold him to his word, because you can't afford to walk away from them any longer! It's really important, Amy! Again, please, take care of yourself, be careful who you trust, and when you can, please let me know if you got any of these messages and call as soon as you can forgive me enough to let me apologize for this awful misunderstanding over the phone instead of just a text. Miss you! Love you! I mean it Amy!'_

Amy's heart crumbled under the words resonating in her broken hearted sister's voice as she read the messages and replied the best she could through blurred vision with trembling hands increasing the effort of trying to find the keys with her thumbs.

' _I am sorry too! I know I said things I didn't mean! I'm not sure I even remember what I did say, exactly, but I am sorry for what I do remember. You didn't deserve that, Lou! I am fine, although I was exhausted when we finally got here…in Paris. I am staying at Ahmed's villa for a while, so I am safe and you don't need to worry. Hope to be starting my new job as team manager soon. Probably take a week or so to get rested and get my life in some kind of order first. I'll text you when I know more. Please tell everybody that I am sorry just to leave like that, but I feel like I overstayed my welcome and it is finally time that I went out on my own to try and make some kind of life for myself since the old one turned to shit, that's all. I love you! Talk soon!'_

After taking more time than usual, Amy stood looking into the mirror at the fashionably sophisticated stranger staring back at her. Everything seemed surreal. It had only been slightly more than a day since she was chasing a no-name abused horse around the round pen at her grandfather's ranch and now she was in Paris dressed in the finest clothes she had ever worn ready to go out on the town with her own personal prince. The made-over cowgirl was not sure of where all of this was headed, but the reflection of the chic woman in the mirror reassured her that the time was right to begin exploring who the new Amy Fleming was going to become, and after taking a deep breath, stood up straight and turned in her high heels for a satisfied last look at her profile from behind and walked out the door taking the first steps toward whatever lay ahead.

* * *

For the second time in as many days Ty awakened to a resistance he was starting to appreciate when he stretched the sleepiness away and tried not to disturb the woman snuggled into his side, but when his movement caused her to stir, "Sorry! Didn't mean to wake you!" he apologized.

"Don't be silly!" Charlie answered. "I haven't slept like that in…, forever!"

Not wanting to rush the pleasant start to their new day, the couple lay silent for a few more minutes and enjoyed the welcomed warmth of soft caresses under the covers, "Thank you for kidnapping me on Friday!" Ty finally broke the silence, trying to get his head around two of the best days he could ever remember. "I hope you enjoyed this weekend at least half as much as I did!"

"Come're and kiss me," she requested, rising enough to tempt his lips to find hers. After he obliged her wish with a warm gentle kiss, she continued, "I'm glad you feel the same way as I do! This was wonderful, Ty! Thank you for being a such a good sport and going along with me and not sending me away like a crazy lady just showing up on the spur of the moment at the clinic like I did! And I am going to have to come by and thank Scott and Cass for covering for you, too!"

"I think they would appreciate that. And, luckily for me, Lisa's foreman likes me and agreed to take care of Harley for me this weekend."

"I will personally make sure he is properly compensated for being so helpful, to both of us!" Charlie giggled. "What do you think would be appropriate, I mean, what do you think he would like?"

"I don't know…, I'm not used to anyone doing something like that for me, other than my family, so I could probably just trade work with him or something like that," he figured.

"Yeah, but I think I need to get on his good side, too, because after the way this weekend turned out, I'm gonna want to do this again!"

"Why don't you come to Fairfield with me and I will introduce you to him, then you can thank him in person. One look at you and I think he will get why I disappeared for three days straight!" he chuckled.

"Fairfield? _Stables_? They are one of my customers! You're not talking about Bill?"

"You know Bill? Yeah! That's him!" he said, amazed to finally find a mutual link between them.

"Ahhh!" she squealed. "You let me handle 'ol Bill. We're buddies! I'll bet he won't mind to find out that you disappeared over the likes of me!" she said with a victorious smile. "This just keeps getting better and better!"

Enjoying the spontaneity he had come to expect from Charlie, Ty rested his head against the pillows and yawned, "I could stay here like this all day!"

"I think I am beginning to see a pattern here," she snickered and threw the covers aside to climb out of the warm bed, "because your laziness and my small bladder seem to meet up about this time every morning!"

Surprised to find that he had fallen back to sleep in only the few minutes she was gone, Charlie decided to crawl under the covers and snuggled into her usual spot against Ty's chest.

"Ahhh! Your hands are like ice!" he yelped at the touch of her frigid fingers resting on his bare chest.

"Sorry! And then she giggled, "But it's cold in here without any heat in the fireplace! Serves you right for snoozing on me like that. We still have some talking to do!" reminding him that some things they had touched upon during their conversation on Friday evening had never been explored any further.

"I know, but this has been such a perfect weekend, I didn't want to take the chance of ruining it with too much, too soon, ya know?" he admitted.

"It has been the perfect weekend, hasn't it? But, getting to know you better has just made me think that I want to know _everything_ about you, and I want you to know everything about me, too…, like…, we're all in!"

"There is no need to rush, Charlie." Ty brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers, "Whether we spend days alone like this, or together with our families, those are the times that we will learn about each other, the times that matter. I am looking forward to spending time with Sammy, too! She is a big part of who you are and I want her to feel comfortable about sharing the time you two have together with me, too."

"Are you kidding me? That little girl is just as crazy about you as I am! The way she lights up when she sees you kind of makes me a little bit jealous, to be honest! You have this natural way with kids, just like you do with all the animals I have seen you with while you are working. But, if there is anything that worries me about us, it's that I know how hurt she would be if something happened between us and she found out that you weren't going to come and see her anymore, not that I would be happy about that either!"

"Don't worry so much about the bad things…," Ty deliberated, "and try to expect good things ahead for us. That is probably the most important thing I have come away with after the setbacks I have had to go through. No matter how hard we try to avoid them, life is going to throw challenges at us, and what really matters is how we react to them. We are off to a good start, you and me, so, let's just promise each other that we will talk things through, together, if something comes up between us, no matter what. If we can do that, then we should be fine!" he offered.

Feeling a fidgety hand nervously kneading into his chest, Ty wanted to reassure the unusually quiet woman lying beside him and reached under her downturned chin to gently guide it upward to face him. He knew if anything could get through to her, the look in his eyes would prove his sincerity, "The trust will come a day at a time, for all of us. Our pasts are…, well, in the past! As pleasant or troubled as what we have been through may have been, those are the things that got us here, together, so we have to accept them and move forward," he reasoned, melting into the crystal blue moisture pooling in Charlie's eyes. He watched her pensive gaze lock into his, "What's wrong? Do you not agree with how I feel about us and how I hope we can be when we are together?" he asked.

Without saying a word, Charlie rolled on top of him and buried her lips into his as in sealing the pact between them, "That's my version of shaking on it, when it comes to making a deal with you!" she told him. "No matter what?" she asked for clarity.

"No matter what!" he reaffirmed to her, then quipped, "Because I've come to find out that you are in pretty good shape, and with your temper, crossing you might not be the best option!"

"Don't you forget that, Doc!" she laughed, then reset her lips to his for a long steamy kiss and accentuated how she expected to be awakened on the mornings they shared. "I want that part included in the agreement, too!"

* * *

Dessert was being presented by the talented staff at Le Chateaubriand, one of the hardest reservations in Paris, as the finale of an eleven course tasting menu fit for a king, as it were, not that Amy really cared anymore. She was feeling stuffed by one of the most delicious meals she had ever experienced and the wine pairing option to coordinate the chefs many choices had her head spinning. She could not remember how many glasses she had consumed, but was aware that she was tingling from the effects of far more alcohol than she was accustomed to.

After dinner the couple sat in the rear of the car quietly wrapped in their own thoughts on the way back to the royal villa until Ahmed grew restless and decided to test the effects of the fine wine Amy had been consuming. He started by pulling her across his lap and leaned in for a warm lingering kiss. When he met no resistance the prince gave a firm squeeze along her ribs and pulled his hand along the smooth silk of her blouse until his palm was underneath her breast, and then pressed into it with enough of a grip to make Amy squirm at his touch.

The chauffeur arced his long black limo into the driveway of the villa, parked adjacent to the palatial entrance, and hurried around to the rear of the vehicle to help his passengers make their exit, but Ahmed had rolled the window down enough to motion him to wait and he could see Amy hurrying to button up her blouse and straighten herself a bit before they were ready to step outside. After a nod from the prince, the driver pulled the handle and swung the door open for the frolicking couple and embarrassed Amy when she noticed his judgmental leer as she passed, causing her to lean into hurrying toward personal immunity on the other side of the large door at the entrance of the prince's European getaway.

The stairs presented a new challenge to the inebriated princess and when she stumbled on the second step Ahmed stopped her with a tug on her arm and bent down to pick up his unusually impaired date to carry her all the way to the top before he stood her back to her feet. He reached his arm around her waist to help her to regain a steady posture and try to recover from disorientation at the sudden stop.

After mistiming her first step, the wobbly country girl kicked off her high heeled shoes and stooped to retrieve the incompatible heels Ahmed had given her as part of her new wardrobe and blurted, "Why the hell girls want to wear these damn things is beyond me! I need ma' _boots_!"

Ahmed placed his hand on the small of her back and steered her to his door, swung it open, and continued to assist her to the front of his personal bar, taking advantage of the magnificent view of the city lights from the floor to ceiling window, and suggested, "Won't you join me for a nightcap?" he smiled.

"You know I don't drink, Ahmed, at least I didn't," she giggled as she patted him reassuringly on his cheek, still tipsy from too many glasses of wine at dinner. "I'm good to go!"

"Good to go? What does that mean?"

Amy sobered slightly at knowing she had said something she wished she could take back, but since it was already out there she looked into his chocolate brown puppy dog eyes and acceded, "It just means that I am fine, like I am. I don't need any more to drink to be here with you." Her cheeks flushed from being so revealing, but she was tired of holding on to the idea that she was still saving herself for the man that she loved and had lost. Amy finally accepted that Ty had moved on and that he had all but forgotten about her with taking care of his sweet little ready-made family, and now was the time to do whatever it took to lay the groundwork for the life she would have to rebuild for herself.

Ahmed saw the surrender pouring into her narrowing blue eyes before she shyly looked away and immediately gathered her into a full embrace, curling a finger under her chin to force her to face him, and engulfed her lips in a hot rolling kiss. Amy pulled away just enough to separate their lips and shook her head in a weak protest to let him know that she wanted to slow things down, but the more experienced lover paused only long enough to lock on to her gaze before deciding not to be denied any longer, pinned her against the bar, and pushed himself fully against her to make sure she knew he was more than ready take the next step in the cat and mouse game they both knew existed between them.

Amy was beginning to have second thoughts at being uncomfortable with everything so far removed from her past life, but when she tried to twist out of the prince's embrace he seized her hands and held them to his chest, "Do it!" he ordered, wanting her to unfasten the buttons of his shirt.

She hesitated, teetering on the brink of dipping a toe into unknown waters, and heard him repeat the command, "Do it, Amy!"

Trembling fingers pushed the top button through the mating slit, carefully moved to the next one, and then another, until the shirt was fully open revealing tempting access to his bare chest. She brushed her palms across his belly and slid them up to his shoulders giving them a squeeze to let him know she was feeling better about their progress. Amy gasped as Ahmed took that as his queue to his next seductive step and hooked a forearm under the back of her thighs, scooped her into his arms, whipped around, and started the short walk into his bedroom.

The few seconds it took for him to stride across the room and toss her onto his bed went into slow motion for Amy as she clung to the last notion of the small town cowgirl she once was and the life she was leaving behind forever. The lights were dim as she looked around trying to get her bearings, the room spinning and her legs draped over the side of the bed, and focused on Ahmed standing in front of her, looking her up and down fixated on the prize lying prone before him. Amy felt his knee wedge against hers, sliding between them and making access for the second one to spread her. He braced himself enough to take both free hands and give a sudden yank at her new Isabel Marant silk blouse sending the mother of pearl buttons flying in every direction when he snapped it open. He rolled her torso enough to slip his hand around her back, grab a handful of the blouse, and pull it free from her skirt so he could slide his fingers underneath it and push his hand firmly up her smooth back all the way to the hook of her bra and unfasten it with a finger and thumb.

"Ahmed! Stop that!" she urged breathlessly and wiggled to try for another minute to think about what was happening, but it only made him more determined to push her even farther. He lowered himself against her using his weight to keep her still and kissed her again, determined and hot, until he felt her resistance weaken with a push from her hips wanting to meet the straining bulge inside his trousers.

When she realized that she was straining involuntarily into his pressure she knew there would be no escaping his desire this time. ' _To hell with it!_ ' she thought, and thrust into him with enough force that she could feel his bound up hardness push into the dampened fabric of her panties as she ground her tingling mound into him. She wanted more, all of him inside her, the ache burning deep within her core desperately needing to be filled and released.

It took all of her strength to push him away for one last demand, "Ahmed, before you go any farther, I need to make sure we have protection, I need to make sure…,"

Ahmed put his index finger to her lips to shush her and said, "Don't worry, Amy, I have taken all of the necessary precautions to make sure we will be safe." He twisted around to open the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed and pulled it open revealing a box of condoms.

She had propped herself up onto her elbows and saw it, taking note that the box was half empty, and wondered how many women had been here in his bed and if he had ever been seriously involved with any of them.

After retrieving the package, Ahmed tore it open, pulled the contents loose with his fingers, and dangled the slippery rubber close to her face, "Would you like to put it on for me?"

It embarrassed her and she knew she was blushing, but Amy never was one to turn down a dare so she bent up at the waist and unfastened the top of his pants, slowly drawing the zipper down to the bottom. She looked up into his lustful brown eyes and bit her bottom lip as she reached inside his boxers and fumbled a few more seconds trying to release his bound up hardness and pulled him free. She pushed his trousers and boxers down to his thighs and raised the freed erection up close to her face to inspect the object of her desire as she wrapped her fingers and thumb tightly around it, helping to quickly extend its length by firmly squeezing the silky smooth skin, sizing him up with several slow, teasing strokes. Her hair tingled on sweat from her scalp when she milked a drop of excitement from his bulging tip and felt its warmth trickle across the back of her hand.

Mesmerized by the awareness that her fantasies of surrendering to Ahmed were actually becoming reality, she watched his shaft strain with desire as she took the rubber from him with her free hand and turned it over to find the opening. After positioning it above the tip of his pulsing penis she took her time in smoothing it around his shaft and massaged it all the way to the base, giving his sack a tempting squeeze before she leaned back on her hands behind her to take in the view. Amy knew from the pulsing mushroom at its tip that he wouldn't be able to hold back much longer and she shimmied to the center of the bed onto the hand puffed pillows under her back, snuggled into the soft bedspread, and waited.

Ahmed kicked his trousers, boxers, and shirt in a heap and crawled into position beside her. He rolled her to him, kissing her deeply, and his firm hands began to explore all around her shape, up her flat belly to cup her breast, pinching her nipple to a stiff erection, then down along her sides to pull her swollen mound into his pulsing groin by the cheek of her squirming bottom.

The ache deep within Amy's core was growing farther up her abdomen into her breasts and down through her thighs with each passing second. The fullness tightened more and more and was pleading to be stretched. She drew her leg up the prince's side and felt her heart thumping inside her expanding chest drawing fuller with each slow breath fueling the desire that was overtaking her presence of mind. She had needed the touch of a man so desperately, to release her body from the torture of not being satisfied for far too long, and to reassure herself that she was ready to move on to the next stage in her life and begin the process of replacing the only experience of sexual release she had ever known with a man being with Ty.

It wasn't long before the prince exhausted every ounce of patience he possessed and slid down the bed to sit up on his knees at her feet. He leaned over and pushed his squirming lovers skirt up her thighs, slowly drawing her knees apart and stroking the insides of her silky smooth thighs with his fingertips watching for signs that would lead him farther to his goal. The prince's firm caress was all it took to cause his prey to wiggle into a more vulnerable position and when he saw that she was moving farther into the urge that he swore he could smell, he cupped her hips toward him with his hands firmly planted on the cheeks of her ass. Amy let her legs drape over his shoulders when he moved closer and nearly squealed when Ahmed rubbed his nose against the fabric of her panties and nuzzled the soft mound still hidden inside them, circled slowly until the found the folds of her swollen lips, and buried his nose into her forcing a seam along the damp cloth against her opening to define where he needed to assert his attention.

He nibbled her through the soaking fabric until Amy gave her partner a look that she knew he would understand, and when he saw it he swung back and balanced himself between her spread eagle legs. He bent down and kissed the soft flesh below her belly button and let his tongue trace slow, wet circles around and around, getting lower with each pass. She raised her hips when he hooked the waist of her panties and skirt and straightened her legs upward to make a way for him to work them to her feet as he made a game out of inching them along her thighs until she flipped them away with her big toe. There was no turning back now, for either of them, and when Ahmed returned his nose to her bare ripened labia Amy growled a low moan when sucked one of them into his lips, rolling his tongue around the plump sensitive flesh as he chewed it gently with his teeth and let it pop loose before going to the other side causing her to shudder with pleasure in anticipation of what was to come next.

The prince raised himself up and leaned forward to position himself above the long awaited treasure he had been yearning for. He hovered for a moment, his gaze glazing over before he kissed her again and when he pulled away Amy noticed that his eyes had a newer, more lustful cast to them which excited her even more as he drew nearer. Ahmed moved to rest the weight of his penis against the tense muscle of her lower abdomen and relished the conflict he recognized in his lover as her head swayed from side to side knowing this time she would be unable to resist surrendering to his charms.

Ahmed hooked his left hand under Amy's right knee and raised it until the front of her thigh was pressed against her shoulder, then repeated the process with his right hand by pushing her left knee into the soft sheets beside her, gently leaning forward to permit time for her to adjust to the severe stretch under the weight of his upper body. When he deliberately began to slide down her belly the entranced lover lifted her head to watch his probing erection slip across the throbbing bundle of coiled up tension in her clitoris and into the folds of her womanhood, separating her fully exposed softness as she waited breathlessly for him to take her.

The prince watched with intense pleasure as Amy's eyes blinked uncontrollably when she felt the tip of his erection push against her blossoming labia and when he gave a short, slow thrust forward she gasped when he popped inside her tight opening, her head snapping backward as she inhaled a sharp groan in reaction to the penetration. Amy felt the fire in her clitoris pouring through her center, sending ripples all the way from the tightening walls of vagina to her brain where it unleashed a cyclone spinning inside her head making her feel as though she might faint. Amy's eyes clinched tightly as she tried to bring herself back to a real place, at a real time, but the tingling that flooded her was exactly like the first night that she allowed Ty to penetrate her, and she couldn't believe those memories would dare intrude on her moment. Her prince withdrew his shaft slowly until its head let her lips slide back together, and then slowly pushed about half of himself into her again, repeating the movement over and over until he had achieved a slow rhythm that his lover responded to by arching her back to meet each thrust.

The lovers were slipping away on a journey that grew in intensity with each stroke of their flesh, and when Ahmed gave a spirited heave with his hips it pushed the length of his member deep inside her, grinding his hardness into her until she could feel her parted lips around his broad base against his tightening sack.

Amy expelled a guttural moan from her lungs as her clitoris set off a charge that shot a jarring quiver through her vaginal walls until oscillations convulsed so powerfully around his shaft that she could feel her body trying to pull him into her even farther. Her eyes clenched tight and her teeth gritted into a silent scream as she rode out the turbulent waves of ecstasy surging through every fiber from her head to her curled under toes, and not being able to breathe caused her to fade into the verge of consciousness as her body used up every ounce of strength to liberate its pent up energy.

Ahmed pumped into his heaving lover with wild abandon until his body arched into her depths, buried within her and frozen still except for the length of his stiff erection pulsating to release the frustration of having been denied by her so many times before, and when he was completely spent, let his weight settle on top of the woman writhing beneath him.

The satiated woman struggled for self-control as she came down from the exhilaration of unbridled passion, her lips narrowly rounded to draw in deep breaths struggling for enough fresh air to resist the closing blackness shrouding her vision. Unsure of how long she had been lying under the prince, he finally rolled to the other side of the bed leaving her flat on her back waiting for some indication of his approval since he had not uttered a word after they had finished.

As the minutes dragged on while lying there beside him, Amy cast a quick glance toward the other side of the bed and saw Ahmed resting motionless on his back with his wrist draped across his face as if it would separate him from her presence, or so it seemed to her, anyway.

A strange feeling of emptiness began invade her moment like a menacing regret. The more her emotions stabilized and the ability to think rationally brought her back to the reality of the moment, Amy's mind slowly crept into doubts that caused her to question the invisible barrier that she had just passed through after tempting the forbidden boundaries of her loyalty for all of these months with the prince. Although her body was at long last satisfied, her spirit was free falling into a desperate darkness and she could not understand why.

Desperately searching for answers, Amy knew something was missing from the experience she had expected to be a definitive turning point in her life and racked her brain to try and think of what could be causing such an awkward reaction to the affair she had secretly been in such high anticipation of experiencing.

The only reference the confused lover had to compare with this evening was from the only serious relationship she had ever experienced, the one with Ty. It had been a long time coming, and when Amy's thoughts took her back to the night she and Ty finally consummated their love for the first time a slight twitch tugged at the corners of her lips at remembering the nervousness she could tell he was struggling to overcome, the tenderness of his touch, and the thrill of sharing her rites of passage from horse crazy little cowgirl into becoming a real woman.

It happened one summer evening under a beautiful starlit canopy, hidden in the tall grass on a blanket in the meadow in which he built the jumping arena as his first gift to her. He was close to being the perfect guy, she once believed, careful to make sure she was comfortable with each move he made and that all of her needs were met, and gave her the first body wrenching orgasm she had ever experienced. When they had finished he swallowed her up into his arms and held her until she fell into a deep, satisfied sleep. He always did that, consuming her with his pure, honest outpouring of love, and it dawned on her at that instant what was missing as she lay still in Ahmed's bed trying not to let the intruding memories crush her under their weight.

Her stomach churned, partly because of the taunting effects of unsettling memories, but definitely as a result of far too much wine for a lifelong teetotaler, and she had to jolt out of bed and run into the safety of the bathroom to heave the remains of a seven hundred dollar meal into the toilet.

Having hovered for twenty minutes over the convenience of flushing away the unpleasantness of her reaction to too much alcohol, Amy finally felt brave enough to attempt going back to bed, but when she noticed the prince resting so peacefully oblivious to her downturn of wellbeing, the urge to be alone redirected her to find the torn garments that used to be the nicest clothing she had ever worn and covered herself the best she could manage under the circumstances just in case one of the royal staff happened to meet her in the hallway on the way to her room.

* * *

After washing away all traces of the evening in a hot bubble bath and sinking into her soft bed, Amy endured a continuous parade of memories and random thoughts marching through her head as she tossed around in the king sized bed in her room frustrated and alone. She pondered what she would give to have those possessively loving arms wrapped tightly around her right now, how disappointing it was that her prince knew little about giving any more of himself than physical pleasure, and whether she could still be effective with the team once they figured out that all their suspicions were now justified. Finally frustrated with tossing and turning for another hour of sleepless torment, Amy rose out of bed to look at the perpetual twinkling lights of Paris. It was two thirty in the morning, Paris time, but her body still thought it should be finishing late afternoon chores in back in Hudson and nothing seemed to offer any relief for her hyperactive mind.

Amy remembered the messages from Lou. She tried to find a reason to justify her actions toward her sister that day, but no matter how hard she tried, knew there would never be one. She admitted she needed to find the courage to call home, someday, but first she needed to find the words to begin patching up torn relationships with the only people in this world that would be the anchor to keep her from drifting out to a lost sea of loneliness, because having to live without someone to love would make living pointless, as far as she could tell, and for the first time in her life felt dangerously close to losing her grip on the line that tied them together.

 _To be continued_


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

A clear blue Alberta sky overhead made Ty's Monday morning commute a pleasant ride on the old Norton. The early chill brought his senses alive as he mulled over the past three days spent at the cabin alone with Charlie and he tried to convince himself that the weekend really went the way he remembered it, free of strict schedules to follow and every minute spent getting to know each other more intimately. He had been pleasingly surprised to discover it was still possible to have so much fun sharing his time with someone, even if it wasn't Amy.

After spending the night alone at his place for the first time since being abducted at the clinic he had taken the time to measure his current state of mind and thought about how quickly things had changed for so many people he knew over the course of the past few months. For him, trying to outgrow a catastrophic failure in his personal life had been good enough reason to set his inhibitions free and simply let the spontaneous weekend bring whatever it had to offer. He knew better than to try to overthink his new opportunity to move on when he decided to go along with Charlie's spur of the moment proposal on Friday afternoon. His choices were straightforward enough, to cower against the unknown or to let go of the past, play along with her proposition, and see how he felt when he came out on the other side.

Being caught up in the void Amy left him in was not going to be the option he would chose. Everything was going be different from now on, no matter what, because there was no possible way to erase the last chapter of the story he lived out in real life with his adopted loved ones at Heartland. The happy ending to an eight year long journey he thought he had managed to arrange had been torn to shreds by a last minute character whose only stake in the plot was to be the reason he would have to start over and leave the best one third of his life in shambles. He would close that sad tale as it was, putting it on an abstract shelf alongside the first two parts of his story, the chapters he wished would never have been written.

The next pages of his story were still blank when Charlie had strutted into the clinic, but after the intro written this past weekend he knew the coming parts were bound to be fast paced and full of potential, even if it would be a long time before he accepted his role in playing the part of a new Ty Borden, a character he would have to take over and make into his own, again.

Cassandra poked her nose around the edge of the window at the rear of the clinic when she heard his vintage motorcycle idle to a stop. She watched her friend take off his helmet and tuck it under his arm, swung his leg over the seat, and start walking toward her. She whirled around and hurried back to her chair in front of the computer trying to appear to be busy updating her nightshift notes and alerted Scott that the eagerly awaited arrival was coming through the back door. Both of his coworkers were anxious to see how Ty had handled being unexpectedly kidnapped by the beautiful woman and if he had managed to make it all the way through the weekend unscathed by his captor.

Ty stopped before pushing through the door to reaffirm his prearranged answers to all the questions he knew would be coming fast and furiously the second he stepped into the office.

"Hey there!" Cass greeted him cheerfully. "You look like you still have all of your parts, at least from what I can see!" she observed, grinning from ear to ear as she looked him up and down in her typical derisive approach to put herself in a more favorable offensive position against her notoriously tight lipped friend.

Ty sat his helmet on a file cabinet behind his desk and returned a defiant smile to his inquisitor, "Yeah? Do I really look that good?" he replied, intentionally giving her freewheeling imagination a gentle shove. "Humph! Wouldn't have thought _you_ couldn't tell, of all people!"

Scott watched his employees banter from the neutral zone a few feet away and chuckled when her curious brow rose in consideration of her next round of prodding, but the mentor of the two younger vets decided he had better take charge of the situation before somebody said something he would have to smooth over if the rest of the day was going to play out on a positive note. "Cass, would you do me a favor and go over to Maggie's and bring us all back some breakfast? It's on me! Just call it in and they will have it waiting for you when you get there, OK?"

Cassandra set her jaw at feeling dismissed, but got what her boss had just done and nodded, "The usual for everybody?"

"Yup, that'll do!" Scott answered and handed her a twenty. "I'll be right here waiting for the change," he jabbed, not planning to let her forget the one time she stuffed his change in her pocket and neglected to give it back.

The two men watched as their colleague walked out the rear exit and as soon as they were alone, "She's right! You don't look anything like I thought you would this morning," and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. "Must've gone OK, eh?"

"I don't know, man! That was one of the best weekends I have ever had!"

"Really? That good, huh?"

The thunderstruck younger man explained, "Charlie's grandma packed us a cooler full of ribs and things to go along with a great meal like that, and we took Charlie's Polaris buggy down to the cabin Clint built by the river and spent the weekend down there," he reminisced in a preoccupied gaze.

"Scenery must have been pretty good, from the looks of you!" Scott offered, amused by the obvious effect the place had on his rebounding friend.

Trying not to spill too much of his enthusiasm, "Yeah, you got that right! And the fishing wasn't bad, either!"

"Fishing? All of that and fishing, too?" the envious friend responded.

Ty filled Scott in with more details about not getting to fry the largest trout he had ever seen and recalled the satisfaction of seeing Charlie transformed from a humbug participant mumbling about being forced into the river to catch her next meal into a full-fledged angler. They both laughed when Ty recounted the excitement they had shared when she hooked "Ole Bill," and how she named the trophy after Lisa's ranch foreman who covered taking care of Harley for the weekend, acknowledging that the time they shared would not have been possible had Bill not been willing to go along with her plan to hijack his friend for three days.

Although he could tell that Ty was telling him the truth about enjoying the eventful weekend, Scott knew his younger friend well enough to sense his struggle with letting go of his past. "You don't have to feel bad any more, Ty, about getting over the past. It will always be a part of you, but I think a man needs to live his life the best he can and learn to make every day count, because we never know if we will get another one! You should know that much, considering what you have been through. We both could have had our story end on the side of that mountain when my plane went down, or who knows how many other times when things could have turned out differently…, but they didn't, and we're still here!"

"I know, Scott, but…, it's hard to accept that things are not ever going to be the way I have worked so hard to make happen. The only reason I went back to school in the first place was to show Amy that I could be more than a ranch hand and that I was capable of offering her a better way of life than a stable hand could, if I could get her to agree to marry me. And, when she did finally say yes, I thought I had gotten everything I ever wanted; a career, a future with the girl I loved, raising our family and growing old together working on our place we would find to call our own. Now that those dreams are all gone, I can't help wonder if, when I do look back on my life, years down the road, will I feel like I missed it somehow? I mean, did I totally blow it by not making the most of the second chance I got when I ended up at Heartland instead of some jail cell and whatever would have come as a result of that."

"I think you have forgotten, Ty…, I know exactly what you are going through, remember? I was once the boy in the loft who loved the horsey girl whose room I could see from my window!"

"No, I haven't forgotten, Scott. Maybe you are the reason I am feeling like I do right now. It's just that…, all these years later, after Lou chose to leave Hudson and move to New York and the exciting new life she thought she had found there, I haven't really seen you get serious about anyone else, and I wonder if that's the way it's going to be for me, too! I mean, I like Charlie, a lot, but, will I ever see her as the girl I was meant to be with and not some kind of backup plan?"

"Well, no, I haven't been serious with anyone else after Lou left me here in Hudson to chase after her dreams in the city, but I decided a long time ago that if I was going to keep from losing everything I was, or everything I might be, that I had to make a choice. The way I see it, you have two options. You can either come up with a dream of your own and chase it with everything you've got, or, you can let the old dreams chase you until there is nothing left to hope for, because those dreams are gone, you're never going to get 'em back, and in the end, they will take your soul and crush it until nothing is left but a sad memory of a man who gave up on life! I don't think that is what you want, any more than I did!" he said, sharing a part of his own dark struggle to overcome rejection from the older half of the Fleming sisters.

Ty looked into the eyes of his friend and read his conviction to move forward, defying defeat all these years after losing the woman he still thought of as his one true love, and said, "I know you are right. And, I know I would be a fool to let my burned out ideas of where I was headed in life to keep me from making the most of a great second…, or third chance to make a go of it. Charlie and Sammy are great, and I really like her folks too, but it's still kind of new, sort of surreal to me, and it's gonna take me a while to feel like where I am is where I am supposed to be, I guess."

"It could be worse, Ty. She ain't hard to look at, just in case you hadn't noticed, and from what I have seen so far, she will keep you on your toes, that's for sure! I think one of the biggest problems you are going to have with a girl like Charlie is explaining to all of those hopeful cowboys around town that you are the one that stole their dream from them! I would say that they won't take kindly to that!" he said, slapping his longtime friend between his shoulders with a good-humored wink.

* * *

The rattling wheels of luggage rolling across the stone driveway woke Amy from a less than peaceful night's sleep. She uncovered her head and listened for a minute longer until she heard Ahmed's voice giving Marie, his head housekeeper, instructions about taking her into the city in search of a new wardrobe. After tossing the covers aside, Amy plodded out onto the balcony and leaned on the rail to watch the commotion of the royal staff preparing to leave for the airport and the flight that would take them back to their home on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

"Amy! Good morning! I hope you slept well!" the prince shouted up to his guest when he noticed her leaning against the rail watching them.

"Good morning, everybody!" she responded generically.

"I have instructed Marie to take you into town…,"

"Yes! I overheard! Thank you! Marie and I will make a nice day trip out of it!"

"Oui! Yes we will!" the servant spoke up remarkably cheerful for this early in the morning, Amy thought, and waived to her friend above her.

"I am sorry to have to leave you alone like this, Amy. The business I have to attend to at home is something I cannot ignore any longer, but a few days rest will be good for you, I think! You should take one of the horses out later. They would appreciate the attention!"

"Of course! I would love to!" the cowgirl still lurking deep down inside her spoke up.

Ahmed smiled as he waived, then ducked into the back seat of the limo. Amy's eyes followed the long black vehicle until it was out of sight and she tried to wrap her mind around being left alone in the beautiful surroundings of the prince's villa and wondered how their relationship would be affected by the previous evening's outcome.

Needing to come to terms with her new situation, Amy tried to piece together a plan for the next few days until Ahmed returned from his urgent trip. _'How will the team react when they find out?_ _What do I say, or how do I act toward him when he gets back? What is going to happen to us now?'_

The young woman continued to lean against the rail entranced in thought as she looked across the flower garden extending to the split rail fence at the edge of the surrounding vineyards. Feeling a huge letdown from her imagined expectations of the encounter with Ahmed, Amy rationalized that maybe it was only because of trepidation from having finally crossed the boundary that separated who she used to be and who she might become. She wanted to pin down the reason for her uneasiness but many things had happened too quickly and she knew she needed some time to figure it all out.

Their intense lovemaking session had been a thrilling experience for her all the way to the end, but she was puzzled by the prince's response, or lack of it, after they had finished. Ahmed's reaction to her this morning seemed to indicate that all was well between them, but she had do wonder if she had disappointed the obviously more experienced lover in some way.

Ahmed had come a long way since their first meeting in which she had become angry at his arrogant behavior and called him _'a condescending, sexist idiot!'_ Although the prince was trained from childhood to be guarded when he interacted with others, Amy believed she had made a lot of progress in getting him to let his guard down around her. It made her feel special to know that she was the only one who had access to his more gentle private side that no one else got to see, but last night was a setback and she did not know why. With Ahmed being so detached, Amy decided the only way to move forward was to take charge and make it her priority to convince the prince to let her into his life much farther than he had, just like she had managed to do with countless abused or neglected horses, with Spartan, one of her proudest achievements, and just like she had managed to do with the unconquerable teenager that used to live in the loft of her grandfather's barn. She realized that this kind of project would be a lot of work, and maybe held a certain amount of risk, but at this point it was her only chance for saving the adventure of a lifetime because the road back to her home in Alberta now seemed uncertain, obstructed by the disappointment from personal failures in a past that would cloud any chance of happiness there.

 _To be continued_


	20. Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

A rowdy calf bucked in the confines of the portable pen hitched to the back of Scott's pickup when Ty sent the vaccination needle into his hide. "Oh, come on! You're just showing out because your mom is watching!" he chuckled after the mother bellowed a pitifully long _'Mooo!'_ he supposed was meant to tell the little one to tough it out like the rest of the herd.

"OK! That's the last one!" Ty yelled to Scott as he sat in the driver's seat of the truck and printed out a bill from the file on his laptop for the farmer waiting outside his rolled down window.

"Thanks, guys. That ought to do until the spring, eh?" the man asked.

"Yup! You're all good," replied the older vet. "Ty! You gonna take all day? Let's get packed up so we can head on back to the clinic!" he shouted as he winked at the farmer who chuckled at the younger vet kicking it up a notch to keep the verbal jabs to a minimum.

"Well, that was a good day, don't ya think?" The mentor asked while checking the rear view mirror for impatient drivers wanting to pass the bulky trailer on the narrow two lane blacktop road.

"I'd say we did pretty well. What was it, two hundred twelve cows and calves, if I counted right, besides the horses?"

"You got it! Days like these help to keep the lights on at the clinic. Maybe even get you enough cash to stop by the flower shop on the way out of town and get that girl of yours a nice bouquet of her favorite roses to make up for being late tonight!"

"That's OK…, she holds you responsible after I told her you forced me into it!"

"She bought that line of B.S., did she?"

"Nope! But it might make her a little less mad at me for being late to her birthday dinner! Funny thing how touchy she has been about getting another year older. It's not like she's over the hill just yet," he chuckled at his hyperactive girlfriend's negative reaction during the days leading up to her thirtieth year. "And I already asked Cass to pick up the roses for me, just in case!"

The two worn out vets opened the doors and hopped out of the truck walking past the sign hanging beside the rear entrance. "Hudson Veterinary Clinic -Scott Cardinal, DVM -Ty Borden, DVM."

The older vet noticed the pause in footsteps behind him and realized the reason without looking. "Feels pretty good, doesn't it? All the years of studying and hard work finally paying off?"

"I guess I haven't thanked you lately, for giving me the chance to prove myself. I couldn't have done it without your help…, without help from a lot of people around here!" he fondly recalled the strangers who helped him turn a page in the story of his unsettled youth.

"No problem, Ty. You earned every bit of what you have accomplished. Speaking of the other people, have you been out to Heartland lately?"

"No, I haven't. It just seems too weird to think about going out there if it isn't related to work. I don't belong there any more, since…."

"Hold on!" Scott interrupted. "Those people invested a lot of themselves in straightening you out when you needed it, and I can tell you for a fact that they all miss you out there at the ranch. Might not be a bad idea to stop by and say hello once in a while, you know? Jack's getting up there and…,"

"Yeah, yeah, I guess you are right. It isn't their fault, what happened between me and Amy. I will make some time to go pay a visit….soon!" he added when he saw the doubtful look on his mentor's face.

* * *

Amy tossed away the pillow shielding her eyes from the morning light to the other side of the bed and welcomed another day in paradise, at least that is where she tried to reassure herself that she had ended up. She pushed all of her fingertips in firm circles to soothe the pounding under temples in hopes of coaxing the pain to subside enough to permit her to enjoy the hot breakfast that she smelled waiting for her downstairs.

Twelve days had come and gone since her host, along with his usual entourage, had left her in the company of only a few remaining permanent staff at his French countryside villa. Some time alone had been a welcomed respite for the beleaguered expatriate to put into perspective how her surge of rising success had floundered into a devastating collapse of everything she hoped to build at home in Alberta. The damage it had caused between her and the people she had always depended upon as her safe harbor in a sometimes chaotic childhood were weighing on her conscience and she wished she could find the courage and words to make the hurt go away forever.

Marie had taken special care to help the obviously unsettled house guest feel more at home here in France and had become even closer as a friendship evolved between the two mid-twenties single girls.

A cautious tapping of knuckles broke the serenity of chirping birds outside the partially cracked guestroom window, "Amy? Are you awake? Breakfast is waiting when you are ready!"

"Thanks, Marie…, I'll be down as soon as I rejoin the living!" she joked, but felt more honest than funny at the moment.

A stream of hot water poured over her less than replenished body as the steam filled shower swallowed up the effects of another restless night alone and aching muscles caused from the lack of sleep plaguing her since leaving Canada under such vexing circumstances. The racking pain from her headaches was challenging enough, but the heavier use of the royal wine cellar was also taking its toll on the way she felt each day. Her taste for alcohol was still mostly untrained but all of the people she would be associating with on the tour always seemed to have a glass of the most expensive wine they could procure in their hand and she had convinced herself that sharing the ritual would surely help her to fit in better than she had during the first trip. She also believed it had a medicinal effect of relieving the constant throbbing that returned every day to impair her ability to function with any authority.

The Royal villa was beyond beautiful, and Amy felt privileged to have the run of the place to herself for so long, but the isolation was beginning to erode any confidence she managed to build up and her self-esteem was paying the price. Thoughts clouded every quiet hour causing her to consider the lack of logic Ahmed was using in delaying her taking control of the day to day preparations required to ready the horses and riders for the prestigious competitive circuit, but every day without any news from her employer only blurred the possible reasons she could imagine making any sense of it.

Ahmed had become even more of a mystery than he had been before the night they shared his bed. The lonely reformed cowgirl spent most of her time alone trying to convince herself that once they had thrown caution to the wind and given in to the temptation they both now had to admit was real that all the barriers preventing them from becoming a legitimate couple would be removed, but Ahmed's sudden retreat into the unapproachable prince he was when she first met him had thrown the no nonsense small town girl for an unexpected lapse in her hopes for a more secure relationship. The mutual respect the two unlikely lovers had gained for each other had come one day at a time and Amy persisted in believing they were past all of the trust issues that bogged them down at first, but her certainty waned as she began to think she had read more into their relationship than was really there, given that the only word she had received from her new lover was to tell her to be ready to travel back to Barcelona on Thursday to meet with him at his new stables which she was surprised to learn still boarded Barriq and a few of the other royal horses.

Amy's awareness that Ahmed had avoided any mention of the team and her new situation since they arrived in Paris was an escalating concern. She realized the clock was ticking against having enough time to work with the riders and their horses in preparation for the next event in Brussels and her employer's expected over exuberance was incomprehensibly non-existent. It would be a tall order, she supposed, not having been informed in any detail as to the teams progress in her absence, and knowing the incident with Anwar would have had at least some measure of undermining the team's morale, but if she was to have any chance at getting the team reorganized she needed to be with them as soon as possible. There would also be the issue of dealing with nagging rumors within the team now having enough legitimate fuel to keep them burning hotter as word got out about her new status with the prince, whatever _that_ was.

Something must have happened, she told herself, for him to leave her calls, texts, and messages unanswered, and it would be essential to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible.

* * *

A friendly conversation between the two women always helped each day get off to a pleasant start. As her guest savored the finishing bite of her caramel-apple-cinnamon crepe, Marie put her hand on the back of her friend's forearm and said, "Thank you again for the new outfit! My fiancé says to thank you as well! He told me he thought I looked beautiful when he saw me in it!"

Amy smiled at the twinkle in her deserving friends eyes. "I'm glad he noticed, because you looked amazing! If he hadn't, I would have definitely traded him in for someone with a pulse!"

"He was very careful when he helped me out of it because he looks forward to seeing me in it again!"

They both giggled at the insinuation and Amy responded, "You are welcome, Marie. I saw the way you looked at it when we found it in the store, and Ahmed owes you a bonus for taking such good care of his place, and his guests, whether he knows it or not!" sharing another mischievous muse over 'his' unlikely act of gratitude.

As Amy pushed her soft leather padded stool away from the breakfast bar her arm brushed across the bundle of mail sitting at the edge of the granite top and sent it scattering across the floor. "Shoot!" she said under her breath, and bent over to gather up the assorted pieces and put them back from where they fell. A newspaper from Ahmed's home in the oil rich Persian Gulf had opened from the rubber band snapping upon impact and when she picked it up a shock went through her body as if she had touched a live wire.

"Amy? What is the matter?" Marie asked when she saw her friend's strange reaction.

Trembling hands placed the paper on top of the cold surface of the bar and smoothed the rumpled paper so her confused friend could see the picture covering the top half of the front page. Suddenly in doubt of everything and everyone around her, she asked, "Did you know anything about this?"

Marie let out a gasp when she saw it. A banner headline above the color photo exclaimed, _**'Prince Ahmed al Saeed Celebrates first win with new head trainer, Anwar Al-Bashir.'**_

"Marie?" she insisted, "Did you know about this?"

"No, Amy! I have heard nothing about Anwar becoming the prince's head trainer!" The housekeeper looked into her intermingled nervous hands and replied, "I am so sorry, Amy! I did not know the prince was going to do these things!"

"Do what, exactly?" Amy asked as she tried to determine the extent of her friend's perceived betrayal, and when the young woman faltered in her effort to respond, "Marie! Just tell me, _please_! Don't you think I at least deserve to know the truth about what happened here? I think you know more than you are telling me. What do you really know about him?" she asked with a not so subtle hint of suspicion. "Do you know what happened the night of the party?"

Still hiding her gaze from the accusatory questions from a friend she had come to adore and one she did not want to voluntarily deceive, "The prince told me that Anwar and Aleah were lovers and something happened between them, that Anwar had sent her back to her family. Obviously there is more to all of this than I knew about!"

Amy pushed further, "Ahmed told _me_ that Anwar had abused Aleah and she was sent home to be with her family, that he paid them to keep quiet about it since he wants a political career and couldn't afford a scandal. He also said Anwar was sent home to be reprimanded by some council of elders for handling his situation so poorly, or for the inconvenience of having to cover up his actions, at least, and that he was off the team. And now, _this_? What is he to Ahmed that he would give him my job and not tell me about it?"

A quivering sigh escaped through the housekeeper's compressed grimace as she conceded to toss away the burden of guilt and share her knowledge of the incident Amy was asking her about, "There are many secrets within the royal circle. Secrets we are better off not knowing about and dare never to speak of them if we know what is good for us!"

"What does all of that have to do with Aleah's disappearance?"

"I am not certain, but one could reasonably assume that considering…," she caught herself from revealing more than she had intended.

"Considering, what?" Amy demanded.

Marie cleared her throat and pondered the ramifications of what she might say next. "A few of us knew that Aleah was sneaking away to meet someone, someone other than Anwar, but we did not know who, exactly. All I know is that something happened early in the morning at the falls because the security guards were sent off in a rush after the prince came up to Anwar's room and pounded on the door. I never saw Aleah after that evening. And…, there have been others."

A cold chill ran down Amy's spine as she tried to imagine where the thoughts surging through her mind would take her.

"Others?"

"Yes, at least two more that I know about. A girl named Rasha that worked with Aleah, and one of the young grooms last year that we were told decided to quit her job and go back to her home in Italy. She came to the villa during the summer to work as a groom here at the stable. I went for a stroll through the flower garden late one evening when I could not sleep. I heard someone with her, in one of the stalls. They were not grooming any horses! It was not long after that I never saw her again."

' _I should have known._ ' Was coming from a voice in her head, imagining Lou saying ' _I told you so!_ ' in the background, then she remembered, "There is something else, Marie, and I need you to be honest," Amy digested the shocking information and tried to put the new pieces of the puzzling mystery together. "Do you know about anyone taking something out of my room the next morning after the party?"

"I do not know what you mean…, something out of your room?"

"There was something taken out of my room the next morning after the party and I want to know if anyone else besides you had access to my things!" she asked.

"All I remember of anything unusual is the torn undergarment I found in the trash. It is not my business, Amy, the reason for them to be in the waste basket, and I told no one else about it, I swear to you!" expressed Marie.

"No one come to you asking about the things from my room?" Amy demanded.

Another pause sent the accuser to the brink of her patience, "Marie! Do you know how much those things out of my room hurt some of the people I love? I went all the way back to Canada to try and tell my fiancé that I had made a terrible mistake when I sent him home with our engagement ring and I realized that I still loved him! I asked him to forgive me for sending him away like I did!" Tears streamed down inflamed cheeks as Amy pleaded to her supposed friend, yet another part of her life she saw turning into another gut wrenching disappointment, "Those things were sent to Ty, Marie, with a suggestive note. They made me look like a fool and a liar when he showed the package to me after I finally convinced him to hear me out. It destroyed his trust between us, something we took years to build up, and something more valuable than anything I could ever hope to gain back through winning jumping competitions. I can't believe the nerve it took for someone to deliver them to Ty personally with the intention of convincing him that I had been unfaithful! It was _not true_!"

"But I was told that you had gone home to sever ties with your fiancé once and for all, to finalize your commitments with your former associates, and that you were expected back within a month for an extended stay, as you have done! The garment was taken to prevent any misunderstanding or unnecessary embarrassment. My priority was to make you as comfortable as possible!" The confused housekeeper explained. "I believed that you were in love with the prince! He implied there was a special relationship between you, and it seemed so to me as well!"

A weight collapsed upon Amy's chest as the thought became clearer, "I was feeling…, tempted, I admit that, because I let all the wonderful things I was experiencing since I left home cloud my better judgement, but I went home to Ty when I realized that I already had the life I wanted, without crossing that line, Marie, I swear to you! But…, after Ty got that package, how could I ever convince him that it wasn't true? It ruined any chance I had to make things right between us."

The phone in her pocket chimed and Amy took it out to see who had sent the message. It read, " _Amy, I need you to be at the airport tomorrow morning at seven am to fly to Barcelona. My driver will take you. I am sorry that I cannot be there with you for the flight but some important business has come up that I must attend to_."

Without looking up the reeling cowgirl swallowed the bitterness stinging inside her throat. "I have a plane to catch!"

 _TO BE CONTINUED_


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Ty hated being late for anything, especially something as important as a birthday celebration for someone he cared so much about. He felt it made him appear to be like one of those uncommitted jerks whose self-centered pursuits always took precedence over loved ones who were constantly left disappointed because of them.

His truck had barely stopped moving when he tossed open the door and hurried to hide his gift smothered in the beautiful roses he picked out on the "Heavenly Arrangements" flower shop's website and broke into a lively run toward the door.

He owed Cass, he admitted, because if not for her agreeing to give the nervous coworker a helping hand by going three blocks down the street to get his arrangement while he was stuck on call with Scott he would not have been able to rush out of the clinic fully armed for a plea of forgiveness from an as of late ultra-sensitive cowgirl-slash-business woman-slash mom. He wouldn't have made it back in time to get them himself and he figured pay back would probably be costly, but it would be worth it, this time.

"Slow down, Ty! You ain't _that_ late!" Clint chuckled at the young man as he hustled toward him. "We haven't even sat down to eat yet!"

"I'm sorry, Clint, I couldn't get out of helping Scott today. It was a big job and it was too much for either one of us to do alone."

"Easy, son! We understand more than you think we do!" and slapped Ty on the shoulder after he cleared the front steps in two long strides. "Remember, you are talkin' to a family who knows that sometimes you have to sacrifice on some of life's pleasures to make a go of it."

"Thanks, Clint," Ty said between a couple of deep breaths, "but between you and me, Charlie's been _really_ touchy about things lately and my being late for her birthday dinner was _not_ something I wanted to add to the list of things that I seem to be annoying her about this week."

"Yeah, she's been especially disagreeable the last few days, but I think when she sees what ya brought her a lot of that is gonna get better real quick, you'll see!"

"I sure hope so!" the worried suitor replied.

Sammy was the first one to spot the vet as he came through the door into the dining room. "Ty! See! I told you he'd be here!" she announced to her anxious mother.

"Sammy! Thanks a lot!" Charlie playfully scolded the tattletale youngster for being so honest in revealing her mother's concerns about the absent boyfriend and hoping he could fix whatever had been making her so stressed.

Ty grimaced at the comment and walked around the festively decorated table holding one hand behind his back as he grew nearer to the beautiful child of the eighties wiping her hands on a dish towel while she prepared herself for a tardy birthday kiss. She tossed the towel to the granite countertop and looked up to pitifully greet him with a pouting lower lip, but the glow in her blue eyes softened just from having him so close and made her ploy to seem disappointed in him doubtable.

"Happy Birthday!" he spoke apologetically. "Maybe these will make your day a _little_ bit better, _maybe_?" as he teased her into making up by revealing the gift.

Charlie's jaw dropped when she saw the breathtaking array as he slowly presented two dozen of the most beautiful crimson fading into deep maroon roses that she had ever seen, maybe even the ones in her grandmother's award winning garden on display beyond the full length windows of the dining room. The surprise demolished her facade of disappointment and a broad smile spread across her lips, eyelashes blinking away at the welling moisture threatening to streak her makeup.

"Hey, I hope those are happy tears!" he said, his disarming smile completely overwhelming the strong willed young woman as he gently took his thumb and whisked away the telltale drops.

Left speechless and unable to continue milking the pity party she had planned to prolong, Charlie pulled herself up to her tip toes by curling her fingers into the hair above Ty's collar and kissed him softly, their smiling lips meeting much more briefly than she wanted, but having a full audience to the display of appreciation was enough to make her keep her emotions in check for the moment.

Sammy beamed to her great grandmother in sensing that a major victory had been won with her mom being happy again, and Margie winked at the girl to acknowledge she thought so too.

When they parted Ty looked at her and gestured toward the bouquet with his eyes, "You didn't look close enough," he suggested.

She knitted her brows in puzzlement, focusing her gaze above his grasp of the contrasting deep green stems to see something glitter in the light when he flexed his wrist.

Her eyes darted up to see Ty's growing impatience as he waited for her to discover her real gift. "Careful! I didn't have time to remove the thorns around it, so don't stick yourself when you reach in there!"

Charlie bent down to carefully spread the stems with one hand while she gingerly poked a finger and thumb into the hidden thorny nest and plucked the shimmering surprise free of the arrangement.

"Oh, Ty! _It's beautiful!_ " she gasped.

Taking her free hand, the humbled woman lifted a gold bracelet and held it up for everyone to see it.

"Well, bring it here, Charlene! Sammy and I want to see what you've got there, right, sweetheart?" Margie asked with a smile toward her great granddaughter who seemed even more excited about the gift than her bewildered mother.

Margie put her reading glasses up to her nose and took the bracelet from Charlie's unsteady hand. "Look what your Momma got, Samantha! Isn't that the most beautiful thing you ever saw?"

Sammy burst into laughter, "A fish! Look! It's got a fish on it!"

That was enough to get the attention of even the old rodeo cowboy, "Sammy? What the heck are you talkin' about?"

"I thought about what to put on it for a long time" Ty explained, "and although the little girl on there, that's your birthstone color, Sammy, and the horse are more traditional, or shall we say, normal things you would expect to see on a bracelet, I wanted something different for you. So, after wracking my brain for a couple of weeks, I thought about the fish we caught down at the cabin and how I turned you from a grumpy lady in waders into the great Canadian fisherwoman all in one day and I knew I had to have it! It was either that or get one made of the skid steer you like to drive around the barn, so the fish won out."

"We? Do you have a mouse in your pocket there, Jack Hanna? I caught 'Ole Bill! By myself!"

"Yeah, you caught 'Ole Bill, alright, but you were so excited about getting him on the line that you would have lost him if I hadn't helped you, and then everybody would have thought he was just another fish tale you were telling!"

As competitive as she was it took a few seconds to sort the recollection through, but then admit, "You are right, Doc. I couldn't have landed him without your help. I wouldn't have even been out in the river in the first place without you making me do it, so, I guess that makes us a pretty good team," she conceded as she leaned into him to offer a congratulatory hug.

"Hey, I wouldn't say that I _made_ you go out in the river!" he protested.

Charlie wrinkled her nose and confessed, "No, but it sort of pisses me off that you figured out how to push my buttons so fast by playing that ' _For a girl_ ' card. I played right into your plan! We both know you did that, so admit it!" she smiled with full accusation in her gaze and bumped her hip against his.

Ty shrugged his shoulders and flashed the grin he had learned to lean on when he needed an out.

"Well, c'mon everyone, dinner is going to get cold if we don't get to it!" Margie prompted.

As everyone settled into their places at the table Clint leaned into Ty as he passed by and whispered, "Maybe you could help me figure out what to get Margie for her birthday. She's got one comin' up and I haven't hit one out of the park like that in years!"

* * *

It had been the most turbulent flight Amy had ever experienced. There were hardly more than a few short minutes of relief between the continuous jostlings that were severe enough to cause the wings to appear to flap like a giant bird as she watched through her window. She wondered if the people who designed aircraft like this one accounted for such radical movement of the huge parts that carried them across the sky and occasionally she caught herself holding her breath to do her part in making sure everything stayed attached.

Not that it would have mattered, but the rough ride may have contributed even more to the intense pressure inside her head. For the few brief moments of the flight smooth enough for the hostess to unbuckle her seat belt and attend to the only passenger she was responsible for today, Amy's only request was to have her bring some Dramamine for her increasing nausea, a handful of Tylenol to fight the pain too intense to ignore any longer, and enough water to wash it all down.

Amy decided she was done with the wine. She accepted that it was making her pain worse instead of helping like she had tried to convince herself before and the after effects were harsh enough to confirm her decision to return to be the teetotaler she had always been. Who was she trying to kid? If she was not going to fit in to her new environment as herself, then who else was she going to be? She was no longer willing to make concessions for others, especially now that her new environment was so unclear.

Exhaustion made every movement an extra effort. She hadn't slept the previous evening, partly because she had to gather up all of her things she wanted to take with her, but mostly because she needed to try to come to grips with the knowledge that her job had been given to someone else without her even being consulted.

What had caused Ahmed to become so far detached from her now that they were together? Why was _she_ not to be the one training the team, or was she even to be a part of it? Why would one of his security officers have asked Marie for the torn panties? How would he have known about them if Ahmed had not ordered him to do it? ' _What the hell is happening_?'

There were many questions she intended to confront the prince with when she saw him again. Her plan was to prepare herself for the meeting and not to let him manipulate her when she pressured him, not to let the things that had happened between them dilute her better judgement and deny her the truth she desperately needed to find, and to get to the bottom of his association with Anwar. However, the frightening flight was distracting her thoughts into basic survival mode because nothing was going to matter if the wings fell off the damn plane before she arrived in Barcelona. Firming up the plan would have to wait for another day.

* * *

After dinner the birthday celebration continued with the rest of the family presenting their gifts to Charlie. Margie gave her a new winter coat and some boots to keep her warm while doing her chores. She knew better than to pick things that her granddaughter would use to go out in because she gave up on trying to keep up with her taste in dress clothes years ago.

Clint took her to the glass doors overlooking the flower garden toward the barn and motioned one of the ranch hands to start up the brand new skid steer and drive it up to the edge of the yard for her to see it. "That's from Margie and me. The way you drive the old one around we figured we had better get you a newer one before you broke it!" Charlie picked up Sammy and rushed out to the machine, shooing the driver out of the way to put her daughter in her lap and run some test circles around the barnyard.

After they came back into the house Sammy gave Charlie four pictures that she had painted with her new water coloring kit, then proudly unveiled to her mom a portrait done in oil that Margie had commissioned a local artist to paint for her granddaughter. It was done to preserve the perfect image of a little girl and her kitten, Sammy holding Sassy in the rose garden in a quiet moment stolen in a photo that Ty had taken when she wasn't looking. Charlie cried when she saw it and hugged them all, overwhelmed by the heartwarming gifts.

Sitting and talking for a long while after the festivities of the evening left Clint nodding off in his recliner and Sammy fast asleep between Ty and her mother. Margie stood from her chair and went over to Clint to nudge his arm and whispered, "Get up, old man. We can't carry on a conversation with you snoring away like that! Let's get you on to bed," and ushered him to their room after they stopped to receive a hug from their granddaughter.

"Better get the brat to bed too, want me to take her?" Charlie asked.

"I got her!" Ty answered as he gathered up the limp 45 lb. girl and laughed, "I swear she weighs twice as much when she's asleep!"

Finishing with tucking her daughter in for the night, Charlie bent down and kissed the girl on the forehead and brushed her cheek as she paused to admire the sleeping beauty. "Night sweetie, I love you, don't you ever, ever forget that!"

Ty loved to see the tenderness between them. The connection was undeniable, an awesome thing to witness, he thought.

When Charlie straightened up and turned around he was shocked to see her face contorted into an alarming grimace and reached out his arms to smother her against his chest. "Charlie? Hey, what's the matter?" he whispered.

She was unable to respond after surrendering to his embrace, quietly trying to smother her sobbing against him and avoid waking her daughter and having to explain to her why she was crying, again.

"Let's get you out of here so we can talk, OK?" he suggested, still dumbfounded by her reaction to what he supposed was a perfect evening.

Charlie nodded and followed along when he took her hand to lead her into the hallway and through the sliding glass doors into the flower garden. He sat on the bench where he had taken the photo of Sammy and guided her beside him. "Charlie, my God! What's wrong?"

It was several more minutes until she collected herself enough to look up at him. Still, another agonizing minute passed before she was able to speak, "I thought that maybe I had finally gotten to a place in my life where all the pieces were starting to fit."

Another long pause sent Ty's mind off in a wild ramble trying to figure out what he might have done to disappoint her, or what he might have missed. "Hey…, hey? Did I do something to upset you? If I did, I am so sorry! I didn't mean…."

"No! No, Ty, you have been amazing, to me, and to all of us!"

"Then, what is wrong? Baby, it kills me to see you like this! What can I do to help?"

Charlie took another minute searching Ty's very concerned green eyes hoping to find the reassurance she had grown to expect to find in them when she needed it, then not knowing a way to avoid the inevitable, "I'm sick, Ty…, I'm very, very sick!"

 _To be continued_


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Arriving at a private hangar in Aeroporto El Prat in Barcelona came none too soon for Amy as Ahmed's driver opened the trunk of the limousine to stow her luggage. The travel weary passenger was surprised that no one else was there to meet her, but considering the taxing case of nausea and lack of preparedness for her own version of the inquisition she intended to unleash upon the prince she felt relieved to have the time to recover before attempting to get to the bottom of her latest dilemma. "I'm Amy," she introduced herself to the driver. "You wouldn't happen to have any crackers in there, would you?" she asked the amused driver who knew from the look of her why she would ask such an odd question. "Javier, at your service, Miss Fleming. One moment, I will see if there might be some crackers on the plane," he replied and turned to trot up the steps to ask the hostess if she might be of assistance to his passenger.

Amy was thankful for Javier being so quick thinking on his feet. The crackers helped settle her stomach while she watched the more modern part of Barcelona pass by through her side window from the rear of the limo. She noticed the city scape to be largely uninspiring, bland rectangular structures found in any common older downtown area, but occasionally a medieval castle or handsome Spanish architecture would sprout up from the countryside and remind her of her whereabouts.

The ride lasted roughly half an hour into the hills just north of town. A winding gravel road edged by manicured shrubs cut through the ripening vines of a beautiful vineyard on terraced slopes below the traditional Spanish villa which was just coming into view. She could not suppress a nervous smile upon noticing the large stable and adjoining white fenced pastures securing a few scattered thoroughbreds flicking their tails as they freely grazed.

' _This is like it was in a storybook Mom used to read to me at bedtime when I was little.'_ She thought as the limo stopped at the wide stone steps that led to the castle-like wooden doors of the medieval styled structure.

Javier hoisted the strap of Amy's luggage on his shoulder and said, "Allow me, Miss Fleming, this way please."

The entrance to the house was impressive enough, but when she turned to look over her shoulder at the view back toward town her breath was taken with the rolling green hills between the villa and the city below framed all the way to the clear horizon by the brilliant blue sea beyond it.

"Amy Fleming, I would like to introduce you to your assistente personal, Gabriela Morales."

"Amy! I have heard so much about you! I am glad you are finally here! Come! Let us put your things in your room. I will give you some time to freshen up and when you are ready I will give you a tour of the grounds, or you can just relax, if you wish."

"Oh, that would be great! Thank you Gabriela!"

The hostess opened up with a warm, welcoming smile, "Enough with the formalities, Amy. It is OK if you just call me Gabby!"

"Well, OK! Gabby it is! Just let me take a few minutes to get settled and I will be down to take you up on that offer for a tour. I can't wait to see this place! It is so _beautiful_ here! And the view!"

"Yes, it is! I will be in the kitchen making a fresh pot of tea. Take a left at the bottom of the stairs when you come down to find me." Gabby smiled again and retreated through the door leaving Amy to her first few minutes alone to take in her new surroundings.

The room was obviously modern but had an old world feel to it with well chosen period furnishings and lavish trim.

The most ornate leaded glass double doors she had ever seen, covered with lacy sheer curtains, teased her from the outside wall with a hint of what was hidden on the other side. They drew her toward them in awed anticipation as she pushed the heavy wooden doors open. Once again her breath was taken upon seeing the stone terrace wrapping around the entire front of the house and a picture perfect view as far as she could see which she could imagine to be to the very edge of the earth. It was so beautiful, so compelling to cause her to be still and soak it all in, trying to convince herself that she was really here in this place, that all of this was really happening, to _her_!

Still at personal odds with her current situation, Amy realized that it was getting more difficult with every passing day to know if she should be furious, impressed, grateful, or afraid of everything that she was experiencing. There were moments of each, and sometimes they all came at once. Her life had taken on legs of its own and she no longer felt as if she had any control over her own destiny.

As she stood on the balcony another unexpected idea worked its way into her thoughts, ' _Maybe I shouldn't be too quick to throw all of this away. Opportunities like this don't come along every day, and I sure as hell will never get another one like it in my lifetime. It isn't like I have any other real options anyway. Maybe there is an explanation for everything, one that makes sense, and maybe I am just over reacting. I need to get Ahmed alone and talk this through, just to make sure. Surely he can explain everything and everything will be alright.'_

* * *

Gabby waited at the breakfast bar with a steaming pot of tea, taking a sip and hurrying to set down her cup when Amy walked through the door. "There you are! How about we take these outdoor cups with us, if you are ready for that tour I promised?"

"Yes, I would love that!" the house guest reassured her new assistant. _I wonder what Gabby is supposed to do for me as a personal assistant? I've never had one of those that wasn't in the barn"_ she wondered silently.

"Awesome! This way!" Gabby motioned toward the door, waited for Amy to pass through it, and then led her guest to the off road vehicle parked outside the lawn's gate to start the tour.

"Are you from around here?" Amy asked. "You seem more like someone I might meet in Canada or the US than on a villa in the south of Spain."

Gabby explained, "Yes, I am from Barcelona. I grew up here. I worked in the city at the big hotels while I was a teenager until I went to the USA to attend university. After I graduated with a degree in business I returned to my hometown hoping to become manager of one of the big hotels down by the water where all the rich tourists come to visit."

"So, how did you end up here, working for Ahmed?" warily curious of a Mediterranean beauty alone in such an extraordinary place, especially after the latest circumstances with her supposed friend, Marie, in France.

"Ah, the prince?" Gabby chuckled. "I was anticipating how long it would take for you to ask me about my situation here. You need not worry about any relationship beyond business between me and the prince. He is not my type, you know? No offense, Amy, but I would only be interested in someone who is not quite so, how should I say this…, uptight?" she chucked again, checking with a sideways glance to see how her new charge took the comment.

"Oh, I get the uptight part, alright! We have had our issues, believe me!" Amy offered.

"Yes, he can be rather direct, although I have only met him on two occasions. Once when he came to view the property, and once again about ten days ago when he actually took possession of it."

"You were here before, I mean before Ahmed bought the place?"

"Yes, I was. The previous owner was an elderly woman, a friend of my family, who had lived here for many years. I was hired by their son shortly after I returned to Spain to oversee her wellbeing. Sadly, she recently passed away and the son no longer wanted the property. That is when His Royal Highness come along to take possession. He told me he had a 'special interest' for the stables and to be expecting your arrival, Amy, so anything you need, and I mean _anything_ , I am your girl!"

The assistant's manner was refreshing, as if she could be trusted, and Amy cautiously grew to like Gabby's attitude, but experience had taught her to expect the unexpected in these social circles.

The two track path meandered around the perimeter of the property beside white fences that backed up the trimmed shrubs lining the drive, crossed a stone bridge that arched over a lazy stream, and zig-zagged through the perfect rows of vines waiting to yield what looked to be a nice crop of grapes for the winery that sat in the valley at the lower end of the property.

"This is so cool! I have to admit that I don't know a thing about vineyards but I can certainly appreciate how beautifully this place is maintained."

"Yes, Casa Junto al Mar has always been one of the most appreciated villas in this region for its fine wines. They provide locally to the best restaurants in town."

"Casa Junto…?"

"Al Mar. Casa Junto al Mar is translated into 'House by the Sea' in English.

"It certainly fits. It is almost overwhelming to see," Amy marveled, still trying to come to grips with the unfolding day.

"Now for the part that I am sure will interest you the most!" Gabby said as she gave the steering wheel a yank and turned back up the hill toward the stables.

The barn was not massive, but there was no comparison to the old faded red barn back at Heartland. The walls were stone to about waist high, intricately chiseled bricks with stone accents up to the eye popping colors of the terra cotta tile that covered the roof, perfectly matching the house and winery. A sliding castle like door opened to reveal a terra cotta paved alley with ornately wound iron topping the wooden gates, counting six on either side. The tack room to the right front of the ally needed a fancier name to suit the mood once she stepped inside to smell the leather from royal saddles and gear hanging in their precise places, and the wash down stall on the left was clean enough that she would have no reservations about using it herself. Stairs of stone edged by wrought iron hand rails matching the horses' stalls beckoned Amy to go up to the next level, remaining speechless and unable to resist the curiosity to know what was hidden up there. "May I?" she asked.

Gabby laughed at the apparent naivety of the new administrator of Casa Junto al Mar, "Of course, Amy! These are your stables now! You can come and go anywhere you please!"

Each step seemed to elevate her expectations because everything she had seen so far was beyond belief, and when she opened the door at the top of the stairs the volume of the open space swallowed her up in its size. ' _Amazingly homey,'_ she thought. A wood paneled wall on the right of the loft separated twin rows of coed style bunks used by grooms or other workers high enough for privacy allowing both sexes to occupy the same space. ' _Humm, I wonder how that works out?'_ Remembering a secret tryst or two in another loft from her past. "Heck, forget the house!" she laughed. "I want to live up here!"

"Nice, isn't it?" Gabby asked.

"Well, we have a loft in our barn back home in Alberta, and I have spent a lot of time up there with…," stopping suddenly, smacked by a memory that took away her joy.

"With who, Amy? Something, or someone of some significance to you, I assume?" Gabby asked when she saw the smile fade into something quite different and unexpected.

"Oh, nothing. It was a long time ago, and it doesn't matter anymore. C'mon let's get out of here," the suddenly stunned cowgirl avoided going into too much of her awkward setback, too soon, too uncomfortable for discussing with a stranger, even if she did seem to be likable.

* * *

Gabby sat a pot of tea and a fresh cup on the small table beside Amy on the terrace outside her bedroom door. "Here you go, this is just what you need to sit and watch the sunset. It will be worth the wait, I promise!"

"Thank you, Gabby, for everything. I appreciate how welcome you have tried to make me feel. I have to admit that I am not sure about all of this. It's just so…, so different. I mean, I feel like I am way over my head, being here like this."

"Oh? May I ask why, if it's not too much, too quick for me to be asking? I can see that something is troubling you, and I would very much like to help if I can."

"That's OK, Gabby. Thanks, though. I just need a little more time to figure things out, I guess."

"I am just down the hall if you need me, OK?"

"Thanks. I'll be fine. Good night."

The new personal assistant exited the room leaving Amy to absorb the stunning evening landscape flowing down from her lofty perch atop of the hills overlooking the postcard perfect view below. She sat quietly sipping her tea, watching the aqua and sky blue hues blend together separated only by the golden glow of the Mediterranean sun as it quenched itself into the endless horizon and faded the day into darkness through sentry like palms swaying in the gentle tropical breeze. This was truly inspiring and it was hard for her to believe that people have enjoyed things, places like this every day for thousands of years on the other side of the world from where she grew up, and now she was here to experience it for herself. She figured most people would consider themselves on top of the world to be in such a peaceful setting, but the nagging annoyance of her body tensing and mindlessly tracing comforting circles with fingertips around her throbbing temples again threatened to steal her bliss.

" _Why does this keep happening, even now?"_ She mumbled to herself, then sighed in disappointment. " _What would it take, what the hell does it take to make this the perfect moment it should be?"_

That thought stopped her musing, thinking about the generously accommodating loft earlier in the afternoon and the memories it brought back so unexpectedly. She could not help but visualize Ty spending years in the drafty loft of her grandfather's old barn enduring torrid summer evenings, mosquitoes, and bitter cold winter nights, simply trying to separate himself from a childhood that would have been the demise of most kids and move on to better things he was just starting to believe in. Her entire family had come to recognize his tenacity and pure heart to try to succeed and admired him, loved him like one of their own for the amazing young man he had become. Amy knew she was a very big part of his determination. His hope to win her over was undeniable, the yearning for the love of a rancher's daughter who lived in the house within view of his window to reciprocate his love that she had no doubt he possessed for her. _'He was mine, and nobody else's. He was the kind of man that would lay down his life for me, he proved that more than once, and I've lost him. I took a big piece of his heart away from him and I know I can't fix it. It is the most horrible thing I will ever do to anyone, and I will never forgive myself for doing that to him, of all people, and I will regret it for the rest of my life!'_

Amy cried in the silence surrounding her knowing she had caused a big hole to be ripped through the fabric of her family back there on the quiet little ranch in Alberta, her home so far away. She had avoided more than a short text to Lou every once in a while to try and maintain some connection to her family, but tonight she would give her part of the world to be able to share this moment with any one of them instead of sitting in the dark and feeling so vulnerable, so alone.

A vibration from her pocket startled her away from her thoughts. "Lisa?" she questioned the screen on her phone.

" _Amy, so sorry that we missed you! Your grandfather (You read that right, he is here with me! :0 ) and I stopped by the prince's villa here in Paris today and the woman named Marie told us that you had left this morning for Barcelona. We hope you are well. Jack and I will be at my villa in Toulon for a few weeks, if I can keep him corralled for that long! HA! Maybe it would be OK if we come to see you sometime? I have business contacts there in Spain so it would be possible to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Let me give you the name of someone that you should trust, if you should ever need help. His name is Alberto Alejandro San Nicolas. He is head of security to Felipe VI, King of Spain. Good guy to know in that part of the world. We would love to hear from you, any time at all. We love you Amy, don't ever doubt that. Lisa."_

 _'San Nicolas..., Santa Claus? Even I can remember that!'_ Her hand trembled when the keypad popped up on her screen. What could she say, how could she say anything to tell them how lonely and weak she felt right now?

" _Lisa! OMG! Grandpa? In Paris? I guess I would have to see it to believe it! HA! So glad to hear from you and yes, I would like very much to see you when you make it down this way. Let me know when. Love you two. Can't wait! Amy."_

The light disappeared from her phone a few seconds after she had reviewed the message and pushed the button to send. Amy stared at the screen hoping for it to light up again, but when it remained dark she stood from the chair and took a deep breath, scanning the twinkling lights of Barcelona from one end to the other. The surprising boost to her spirit coming from two of the most important people in her life filled her heart with a much needed tingle inside, and to reach out and try to touch them back was just as satisfying, but she also admitted to herself that a warm hug from someone she loved so dearly right this minute would have gone much farther to heal her doubts and fears than any words ever could.

 _To be continued_


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Desperate for meaningful words, Ty wanted to say something encouraging to support Charlie, but her shocking announcement had shaken his wits and rendered him speechless. All he had to offer the distraught woman was his firm embrace, wrapping her up in his arms and letting her exhaust her frustration until she was able to further explain.

"I am so sorry that I just blurted that out to you like that. I have been trying to think of a way to tell you, but so far…" she hesitated, "Can we walk? I need a minute to clear my head."

"Sure, take your time." He stood and extended a steady hand to his trembling girlfriend, tendering the needed assistance for her to rise out of her seat.

Slowly they made their way down the stone path to the gate at the edge of her grandmother's flower garden. "Would you mind taking me to the overlook?" she asked. "We could use the buggy."

Very concerned at what he did not know, Ty put his arm around Charlie's waist and guided her to the passenger seat. "Here, hop in." He looked at her as she settled into the seat and when she avoided his confused study of her expression he reached under her chin to pull her eyes up to his, "I'm here. Everything is going to be OK! I'm not going to let you go through whatever this is alone, I promise," and leaned in to suggest a much needed kiss on her quivering lips which she hungrily accepted.

Quiet filled the space around them after the buggy's engine shut down. Ty wasted no time in getting out of his seat and rushed to aid his passenger as she exited the vehicle. "I'm not helpless…, yet!" she snapped, then regressed, "Oh, God! Ty, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" she apologized.

"It's OK. C'mon, let's get you over to the bench."

Charlie sat and watched the champion of her heart slide in next to her feeling guilty and accountable for his outwardly visible anxiety as he tried his best to appear calm and collected so as not to further agitate her, swooping his extended arm around them with the blanket he remembered to swipe out of the back seat of the buggy. "Comfy?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you! You think of everything!"

"That's what I'm here for! The Doctor knows how to make everything better." He used the quip to see if Charlie was any more receptive to opening up to him and felt slightly encouraged to see the corners of her lips twitch upward when she glanced up to him in silent appreciation toward the gesture.

A long silence dominated their presence as her eyes adjusted to the lack of lights after the short ride down the trail. She slowly filled her lungs with a deep inhale and fixed her gaze into the boundless void off to the west, pierced by a thousand tiny flickering pinholes against the black canvas of the moonless night, then slowly it escaped her pursed lips as she began, "It is _so_ beautiful up here. This is one of my favorite places I have ever found, looking toward those beautiful mountains, on top of the whole world and looking down toward almost everything else there is." She paused for a few more seconds before continuing the envisioning, "When I was little I used to look at them and wonder what was on the other side. I had no idea back then how high they were, or how far away, or how long it might take to cross them."

Ty stayed the course, deciding to let her spill whatever she was holding at her own pace, pulling her closer as he patiently waited.

"That's kind of where I am with my life right now, looking at a new range of mountains to cross that I never saw coming, not knowing how high I will have to climb or how far I will have to go to get past them."

Charlie finally let her eyes drift up to Ty and then she pulled the string that let the stars fall around them, "I have cancer," she whispered. "The doctor says it's already at stage four, so spare me the _'We can beat this'_ speech. I don't mean to come across as bitter, although I have to admit that I kind of am, but I have already asked the questions, gotten a second opinion, read all the websites, you know, everything from _'Expect Miracles from God'_ to _'Get your shit together and kiss your ass goodbye!'_

Ty was quick to protest, "Charlie! That's not…" but she was quicker to continue, "Yes, I'm afraid it is," she came back matter of factly. "Don't try to sugar coat it, Ty, it is what it is…, and I am trying to accept it for what it is… Now I have to think of my daughter, my baby who has already lost the father she was too young to know. How can I leave her behind in this world without her mother to look after her? How am I going to explain to her that I have to go away and I won't be around to take care of her anymore? _It's so goddam unfair!_ _She does not deserve this!_ She is so small, so innocent, so perfect, and I can't do anything about it! It's just not _fair_!" she ended, defeated and fading in strength to sit upright as she melted into his embrace.

"Listen, Charlie," he spoke softly, carefully choosing his next words, "I don't know what the doctors have told you, and I am not going to sit here and preach butterflies and rainbows to you about how this not being something we are going to take seriously, but…, to be honest, it can be said that _no_ disease has a cure, I mean, if they did then there wouldn't be anything out there left to make any of us sick! What that means is diseases of all kinds are around us all the time and we are able to keep on going because we find ways to control them."

"Ty…"

"No, hear me out first!" he cut back in, refusing to let her impending hopelessness steal away her drive to fight her condition, "One of my professors said something in class that I will never forget. He said all living creatures inhabiting this earth are said to be the most complex mechanisms in the universe, and how can you argue against his reasoning? Think about it, Charlie! Any _one_ of us is complex beyond our comprehension as an individual, but then add to that idea that _every single one of us_ is unique in our own way. Our bodies are built to know how to heal themselves when things go wrong. We would have been extinct a long time ago if that weren't the case. They didn't have pharmacies in every corner cave in the neighborhood ten thousand years ago, or even a hundred years ago, or doctors writing prescriptions for pills to cure every ailment that cropped up. We need to slow down and look at where we are and think about this, together! I know I am rambling, this has really knocked me on my ass, but, if there is one thing that I want you to know more than anything else, you are still strong, you're not beaten yet, and you are _not_ alone in this!"

"Ty," Charlie commanded his attention by squaring her shoulders toward him and taking his face into her hands, capturing his frightened emerald gaze into hers, "I knew you would approach this as something you could just refuse to accept and immediately try to find a way to fight back. That is just who you are! You have had to live your life that way just to survive ever since you were a little kid, and God knows I love you for the kind of man you have become because, besides my Grandfather, you are the most wonderful man I have ever met." She paused to restore her breath, taking a slow moment to use her thumbs and wipe the tears streaming down Ty's cheeks as he desperately grappled against weakening, to keep from breaking down in front of her. "I want you to know that one of the best days of my life was that day in the clinic when we literally bumped into each other. I knew right then that you were different than anyone else I had ever met before, and I mean that. I knew that you are the page that would hold the rest of my story, my knight in shining armor that came along when I needed you most, and Sammy thinks you hung the moon, just like I do. I love you, Ty Borden, and I am so sorry to be the one who is going to break your heart again, but I am afraid your optimism can't save me this time. You need to work on accepting my fate, like I am trying to do. I don't have the luxury of time to waste on frivolous hope. False hope is only going to complicate things and take away from the time I need to come to grips with the harsh reality that I have a little girl to think about. From now on my focus has to be about how I can help her to get ready to be without her mom."

The rock Ty leaned on for strength suddenly broke into a million pieces, shattering the will to hold his emotions in check at realizing there were other people who would have to come to terms with Charlie's condition as well. "Do Clint and Margie know?"

"No, not yet. I was hoping that you would be with me when I tell them."

Both of his hands cradled her face, amazingly focused and resolute to be strong, he thought, just as her hands were to his, and together they tried in vain to wipe away tears coming faster than could be extinguished, "Of course I will! Like I said, I am here for you, and I need for you to know that I mean what I say!"

"I know you mean it, Ty. But, it's going to devastate them. We have to help them get ready for when the time comes to explain all of this to Sammy."

They held the embrace and wept, as still as the darkness surrounding them, until the new day had come around to begin a new chapter for the two of them, and everyone they loved.

"Take me back to the house, and, I want you to stay with me tonight, OK?"

Taken aback with what she had asked, "You mean…, in the house…, together…, in your room? How…"

"Are you chickening out on me?" she dared him.

"Well, no, but, we are going to have some explaining to do if…"

"I will protect you. I know where grandma keeps her rifle!"

* * *

Charlie woke up smothered in Ty's arms. She smiled at being wrapped up by him and feeling more loved than she could ever remember, managing a smile at being able to cross one of the first items off her official bucket list she had started to keep.

The smell of bacon would be waking the man beside her soon and she figured she should probably head out to the kitchen to warn her grandmother that she would be sleeping in today, that she had invited a guest, and to ask her to keep Sammy occupied for a couple of hours while she and Ty spent the last of their tryst together before unleashing a drama she wished could me avoided.

"Hey sweetheart! Good morning!" Margie greeted her granddaughter. "You got in kind of late. Everything alright?"

"Well, Grandma, actually, I need to tell you something," she admitted, still finding it hard take the chance of pushing the older woman's boundaries.

"That _something_ wouldn't by any chance still be asleep in your room, would he?"

Charlie's heart skipped a beat, amazed at how the crafty matriarch of the family rarely missed a single thing that happened on her watch, the only reason she rarely ever tried to pull a fast one in this house as a kid because any plan of hers would have been doomed before it even had a chance.

"Actually, yes, he is, but I wanted to tell you…"

"Save it for another fight, honey!" Margie scoffed. "We might have to straighten out a few things later about house rules, but, you know what we all think of Ty, and I can't say as I blame you for letting him feather your nest once in a while…,"

"Grandma!"

"Oh, get over it, Charlene! All I am saying is that whatever you do, remember that you have a daughter living here and if you are planning on kicking things up a notch with your man, she has to be considered, is all. That, and I may have to get an extra one of your grandfather's pills ready when he finds out," the older woman chuckled, not all that concerned about Clint protesting the new development with his granddaughter.

"The reason he stayed last night was because I asked him to. We were late, as you know, and I didn't want him falling asleep on his way home. Besides that, I have some things I need to tell you and I wanted him to be here with me when I did."

Margie dropped the spatula she was using to flip pancakes, whirled around with her brow in a curious knot, and shuffled at twice her normal speed toward Charlie who was surprised by how fast she was being approached. After reaching down to pull her granddaughters left hand up for inspection and finding all of her fingers still bare of any rings, she placed her right palm on the embarrassed younger woman's belly and tried to locate the bump she expected to feel under Ty's shirt that Charlie had chosen to sleep in last night.

"Grandma! It's not that either!"

Ty couldn't help but laugh at seeing the impromptu examination.

"Oh, there you are!" Margie said. "Charlene and I have just been having a little talk about you!"

"You got the gun, right?" he was quick to ask Charlie.

Charlie could not help but be amused at the expression on Ty's face in spite of what was to come when the time was right, "Yeah, that's all good!" she reassured him.

"OK, then!" he expressed with relief.

"What is all the commotion out here?" Clint laughed, "Hey, Ty! You're here kinda early aren't you…, or not!" he said as he woke up enough to see that his young friend had not just arrived.

"Charlene says they have something to tell us, but she don't have a ring and it doesn't look like they are in a family way yet."

"My God, Grandma, will you stop!"

"And I thought I was goin to get up just like every other morning and have some eggs with my toast and coffee, maybe even beg for a slice of bacon. But if you have something to say, spit it out! How bad can it be?"

 _To be continued_


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

A lazy mist rose from a gap in the forest that skirted the meandering stream in the valley below the villa. Amy watched it from her perch on the balcony just outside her bedroom windows as it drifted into nothingness in the soft morning breeze. A smile tugged at her lips when a foal she had been watching spontaneously bucked and took off racing around his mother in the pasture beside the stables. _'You are a lucky boy to be growing up at a place like this,'_ she thought, sighing and speculating whether she might be the one to train him someday soon. She envied the playful, carefree nature of the high-spirited warmbloods at that age, first learning to identify with them as a horse crazy cowgirl growing up in the shadow of her mother, a horsewoman recognized throughout Canada and western USA for her uncanny ability to get inside an unreliable horses head and "fix" its difficulties for their owners, many times saving them from being tragically destroyed as too dangerous or completely unworkable to keep. The moment made her misty eyed, missing the most influential woman in her life, and wondering what her mother would think if she could see her daughter now.

Finishing up the fresh squeezed orange juice Gabby had brought her, Amy contemplated her whereabouts and realized it was fast becoming a favorite spot to take in the goings on of the new surroundings.

The quiet time was soothing. Daydreaming caught her off guard and strayed to memories of home and missing the once perceived hum-drum of daily activity back at Heartland. The laid back observer glanced around the barn lot expecting to see Georgie carrying flakes of hay to their horses with five year old Katie close behind her older adopted sister trying to learn the morning routine of their chores before leaving for school, and then listening to them giggling as they raced a last second dash up the drive to catch the school bus, late as always, a tradition she knew all too well from repeating it a thousand times herself.

A quick chill shook her peaceful musing, evaporating it like the mist from the valley when the natural reflex to reach out and share the moment with a loved one left her suddenly feeling empty and alone. Amy drew in a long breath to return to the present from a memory that had snuck up on her. Instead, she saw an ominous looking man casually walking around the stables and various out buildings seeming to pay particular attention to the surrounding hillsides between the checking of doors as he passed by them. Another similar looking man was just finishing a long scrutinizing stroll up the driveway and now stood at the base of the steps to the front door. She hadn't noticed either one of them the day before, but experience had taught her to not to be alarmed to see armed guards occasionally patrolling the prince's properties, especially if he was expected to arrive over the next couple of days.

The view was amazing, no matter what time of day, and Amy could not imagine a more beautiful place to enjoy the quiet awakening of the hills overlooking Barcelona, but the threatening looking men reminded her that the reason for her being here was still a mystery.

Disappointment from Ahmed having to leave her alone in France had made her miss him in spite of the assumed misdirection. Confusion, anger, and need each took its turn in controlling erratic emotions which seemed to be taunting her control. Despite his cryptic behavior lately, Amy could not deny the desire to get closer to Ahmed again. ' _It's too late to back down now,'_ she thought. _'Whatever the circumstances were that got me here, I have to follow through and figure out how to deal with him.'_ The prince had the knack for infuriating her, she had to admit, and questions needed to be answered, but he was the closest thing to a personal relationship she had with anyone these days and somehow she had to stay committed to making things work between them.

In the valley far below her vantage point, intermittent flashes of reflections caught her eye from a distant procession of vehicles snaking along the highway through layers of ridges between the villa and the city. She watched curiously for several minutes as five SUVs continued in close formation as if part of an odd looking train until it occurred to her that it could only mean one thing, the royal circus was arriving! _"Shit! I thought I would at least have today to get ready! I haven't even had time to think about what I am going to say to him yet!'_ Frustration and a rush of dread directed at her tendency toward procrastination took hold of the harried house guest as she quickly stood up from her chair when the first SUV confirmed her intuition by slowing and turning into the lower drive at the entrance to the villa.

One by one the shiny black Chevy Suburbans flanking a lone Cadillac Escalade trailed one another up the drive until they circled around the loop at the main entrance of the house. Two pairs of security personnel exited the vehicles in the front and rear of the Escalade in second position, Ahmed's personal car, no doubt, and scanned the area for anything suspicious before the larger man at the stairs nodded to give an all clear.

Suddenly, a swarm of activity poured out of the silent caravan. The driver of the Escalade was first to open his door and dash toward the popped hatch to retrieve its full load of luggage. Two mid-twenties ladies exited the last vehicle in the line and joined two able looking young men of about the same age from the SUV in front of them. Obviously having never seen this place before, they all gathered together pointing toward various discoveries, looking this way and that, and talked among themselves in animated chatter.

Speculating that they were personal aides who always accompanied the prince when he traveled, Amy shielded her eyes and squinted to focus against the morning sun to better try and evaluate the crowd. One of the girls in the rear looked like the apprentice groom she was told to expect and the men were probably farm workers coming to live in the upstairs accommodations of the barn.

More evident than usual, five security personnel from the other vehicles made sure His Royal Highness was protected against threats, both private and political, and to see that he would be well taken care of if the worst should come their way.

A woman Amy assumed to be in her early thirties stepped out of the rear of the Escalade and Ahmed exited from the front passenger's side, stretched his back and shoulders after he closed the door, and searched around the villa as if he expected to see something, or someone in particular. It was only a few seconds before his eyes landed upon her as she peered over the edge of the balcony.

"Amy! I am so glad to see you!" He greeted her with his time tested smile and casual wave, and then looked at his wrist watch, "Meet me downstairs in the kitchen, uhh, in ten minutes, please!"

"I'll be there!" she answered, unsure what she perceived of their first personal contact in over two weeks since it was the same greeting she would expect to see him give any of his business associates.

* * *

Gabby poured a fresh cup of tea for Amy who waited in the kitchen, nervously fingering the cup's rim in anticipation of how she should conduct the next few minutes with Ahmed. Wary of all the possible outcomes of the conversation, the indecisive victim of one too many good loves gone bad knew from experience that any words spoken by either of them could, and probably would, affect the rest of her life. _'I cannot screw this up!'_ the little voice echoed in her head.

"Are you OK, Amy?" asked Gabby, breaking a pensive silence in the room. "You look so…, tense."

"Oh? I'm OK. I _think_ I am, anyway!" Amy hesitated to reveal so much, too soon to her new personal assistant, but the need to confide in _someone_ in hopes that her trust would not be disrespected again overrode her apprehensions. "It's just that things have been kind of awkward between me and Ahmed lately. I haven't seen him in a while…, and we have some things we really need to talk about…, and I'm not all that sure of what to say, or more like, how to say them."

"Humm? Just tell him what you are thinking, Amy. That has always worked best for me when I have had to address any issues with someone…, umm…, _important_ to me. Everything will be fine," Gabby reassured her, and then offered, "OK, I will leave you now, unless you need me to stay? I think you need some time alone before the prince comes to talk. I will be just outside showing the new chef around our garden and gathering things for the salad we are preparing for lunch if you need me. OK?"

"OK, good! And thank you!" the tentative woman replied. "You must be wondering so much about me and what I am doing here." Amy assumed, shrugging her shoulders, "Trust me, I am wondering the same things about myself! Oh, you said something about a new chef?"

"Yes! We have a new staff member, Lucie, who just arrived from Paris! She is amazing, Amy! But, anything more than another prepackaged box in the microwave is good, yes?" the hostess laughed and sympathetically nodded, picked up a locally hand woven basket, and closed the door behind her as she stepped out toward the abundant herb and vegetable garden.

Amy wanted to appear firm to Ahmed, not to show any signs of weakness when she expressed her disappointment with her employer, or lover, or whatever he was to her these days. She was unsure of practically everything between them now. Was she his employee and nothing else? What was he not telling her? Was she in trouble and too blinded by hope to see it yet?

A voice shook her from her inklings, "Amy! Have you found the accommodations here at my new villa to be acceptable?" asked the prince.

"It is absolutely wonderful here, Ahmed!" Amy opened up. "And Gabby is amazing! She has made sure I had everything I needed since I got here."

"Excellent! I compensate Gabriela quite well to ensure the villa operates flawlessly." Remembering something in his pocket, Ahmed retrieved an unlabeled plastic bottle and handed it to her, "Here," he said, "The doctor says you need to take two now and one every twelve hours after that. They will help you with the pain from your headaches," he said, turning and gesturing toward the door. "Walk with me to the stables. We need to discuss any changes you feel might be necessary to handle the kind of horses we will be keeping here. I have a vision of what we can accomplish in this place, Amy. Just you and me, together!"

Amy took two pills from the bottle and gulped them down with the last of her tea before hurrying out the door. Listening anxiously for any sign of explanation for her unanticipated reassignment as she strolled beside him, she immediately recognized the prince's evasive zeal as they approached the stables.

The perturbed woman pondered her options a few awkward moments longer regarding the white elephant prancing all around them that he clearly had chosen to ignore. Ahmed fumbled with the latch on the barn door and the more experienced ranch worker impatiently motioned him aside and pushed it open. Once they were inside the stables Amy looked around the interior to make sure they were alone, leveled her scrutiny directly into his eyes, and decided there was nothing left to do but to begin the inquisition, "Just you and me?" openly mocking his ideal, realizing that nothing personal was going to be resolved if she were not the one to initiate the suspended conversation, "So, what am I doing here, Ahmed?" she spoke plainly, calculating and careful not to show how enormously upset she was with his excluding her point of view from his decision to move her here to Spain. "Why am I in Barcelona instead of with the team in Brussels preparing for the next competition?"

Flashing his most confident smile, the polished negotiator looked straight back into her eyes and plunged into his predictable well thought out pretext, "I felt that you would be better placed here at these new stables, Amy," he rationalized. "I bought it just for you! You will no longer be under the extensive pressure of international competition! The time and effort it takes to be effective as team manager and the traveling required under those circumstances is too much to ask of you, Amy." He raised his hands and gave a reassuring squeeze to her tensing shoulders before continuing, "You do not need those complications any longer! As the new director of Casa Junto al Mar Stables you will find that your work will be more relaxed. Life here will be much more exciting and satisfying than you ever expected!" he offered, searching for an answer that would appease the frowning former head trainer. "Because of your continuing recovery from the injuries you suffered in Alberta and these terrible headaches, this place should allow you to be able to heal more quickly, Amy! Let Anwar carry the burden of managing the day to day business of the other riders and their horses."

"How do you even know about the headaches? It's not like you have called to ask!" she snipped.

Ahmed shrugged off her sharp remark a bit too effortlessly, she thought.

"I make sure keep a watch over you, Amy, whether or not you realize it! I am aware of the old prescription pills you have been taking and the ineffectiveness they seem to have in helping you with your pain."

Amy had always considered it a possibility that he would secretly keep tabs on her when he was away, but now she knew for certain.

Feeling a little tingle of relaxing warmth, the accuser tried to keep the conversation moving before he found a way to sidestep it again, "You didn't think it was important to at least _ask me_ about the job before changing things around like this?" she asked pointedly. "It doesn't seem to me that my opinion matters for much of anything with you anymore!"

Ahmed reset his stance in front of her, seeing the intensity diminish in her eyes, and smiled his reassuring best before he began, "But, Amy, I bought this place and brought you here because I felt we would have more quality time together without the team, the press, or anyone else prying into our personal lives like they would if we let them. Here, we can be ourselves. We can do as you always wanted! We can travel, buy our horses, and raise them just like you told me you wanted, Amy! This is your dream come true, from me to you!"

The unseated head trainer was surprisingly astounded by the prince's vision, somehow defusing the powder keg of bitterness she held toward the man having apparently hijacked her new career out from under her as well as hurting her friends so quickly that she forgot why she even struck the match to light them off. Her body was lighter, nearly floating weightlessly as her urgent need for answers wilted. "You gave my job to Anwar? Because you didn't think I was good enough…, or?"

"No, that is not the reason at all! It is because your dream is _here_ , Amy! All I want is for you to be happy! It is because I love you that I brought you here, so we can be together!"

Stunned by the unpredictable turn of the mood, Amy stood still, unable to resist as Ahmed pulled her into his embrace and kissed her fully on the lips. _'I must be dreaming!'_ she reasoned, _'What was I so worried about? I knew I could trust him!'_ "Shouldn't we go someplace more private?" she asked as he pulled away to evaluate her acceptance. "Someone might see us!"

"No one will see us, Amy," the prince reassured her calmly. "I have sent everyone away until we are finished in the barn. We are all alone, just the two of us."

 _To be continued_


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Margie took the news much better than any of the others. Growing up on the prairie had a way of making its natives pull a veil courage around themselves that hid all the fear and hurt they suffered in the face of inevitable hardship.

The natural predisposition to fight anything and everything that posed a threat to any loved one of hers put the time seasoned rancher's wife to task looking for the best way to face it, but her husband was visibly crushed into a thousand pieces as he buckled under the weight of the disclosure his granddaughter had handed them.

Charlie had been holding onto Ty's hand so tightly while she let loose of her news that his fingers were turning numb, and he felt a little ashamed for the sensation of relief when she released her grip to sit on her grandfather's lap and bury her face into his shoulder while they both surrendered to the pain overflowing from two broken hearts.

A twinge of guilt ran through the self-alleged outsider for having no practical idea of what to say or how to help the family in the dreadful moment, no matter how much he wished he did. Although Ty had started to feel more comfortable spending family time with the McCrarys, being in their midst as they shared such a tragically life altering moment made him feel out of place and weak when they needed strength, useless to their needs.

The older woman noticed Ty's distress at wishing he could do more than quietly stand aside watching the people he cared for so much dealing with their sadness. It touched Margie to realize her granddaughter's new love had a genuine compassion for them as well. She had not yet had the time to consider how much his life would be impacted, much like the rest of the family, and selflessly walked up to him, took his elbow into her hand, and led him into the next room.

Not knowing quite what to expect from the matriarch of the family, Ty wisely followed along knowing he would comply with her wishes, no matter what she asked of him, but was surprised when she tugged him into a comforting grandmother's hug and whispered closely as she looked him in the eyes, "You have been so good to my girls, Ty, and to Clint and me. I just want to thank you for being here for her when she needs you the most. I don't think you have any idea how much it means to us, and to Charlene, to have you here with us right now. I know it isn't fair, to just be starting out and have something like this happen out of the blue, but life does what it wants and we just have to figure things out the best we can. It's gonna be tough, Ty, but we're going to stick together, no matter what, _all_ of us, so if you need anything from me or Clint you just speak up and tell us, you understand me?"

Ty stood away and studied the amazingly perceptive woman, her steadfast determination reaching out to him through the unmistakable love in her eyes, and nodded. "I appreciate that, Margie, and same here," he said, "I'll do the best I can to do my part in this. Just tell me what you need for me to do."

Margie nodded back to the principled young man she was glad to have beside them in such a hard-hitting circumstance, squeezing Ty by the arm and turning to walk into the room where her husband and granddaughter continued to find security in their embrace. "Ok, everybody, we have to get ourselves together before Samantha wakes up," Margie directed. "Charlene, you and Ty need take your breakfast and go down to the cabin for a while. It will give me a chance to feed her and get her to doing something that will keep her occupied this morning. Same for you, hon! I don't need you getting' all broke up in front of her yet, so eat up and get on out to the garage, or to doing something useful until you get yourself shaped up enough for her to see you. I will take care of Sammy."

* * *

Neither of them had spoken on the ride down to the cabin. The young couple sat in silence absorbed in the quiet hum of the river wishing for some kind of reset button to push in their minds and hoping beyond hope that the best part of their brief time together was not already behind them.

The sound of the water dallying through thousands of time-worn stones was medicine to the soul, but the grim reality of their situation made even the littlest things seem hostile in consideration of the battle that lay before them. Ty was no stranger to what it means to have to fight his way back from the brink of giving up. There had been many times in his life when he thought he might have reached his breaking point, but somehow had managed to pick himself up and face whatever threatened him and defeat it, to move on through a deep-rooted hope of making something of himself in spite of his rough start in life.

This time would be different, though, because Ty knew that death takes pieces of you with it when it leaves, and you never get them back.

They sat for what must have been an hour trying to reach beyond the boundaries of fear and debilitating disappointment confining them to their own thoughts. Deciding it was finally time to begin his attempt for the healing process, "Your grandmother is probably the strongest person I have ever met. I don't see how she does it." Ty calmly spoke into Charlie's hair, his cheek nestled into the top of her head as she burrowed tightly inside his arms against his chest.

"That's just the pioneer spirit she was born with. That's what settler women had to be like," she explained. "A lot of the fifth and sixth generations are still with us and that's how they were taught to cope with life and whatever it threw at them. If they wouldn't have been able to stand up to the rough conditions like they did, well, none of us would even be here today."

"I suppose you are right," he pondered, "I wonder if I could have made it, you know, if I had lived back then. I just don't think I have the guts those people had, the inner strength that made them so determined to carry on when things got bad."

Charlie sat up and looked her confidant straight in the eyes, "Don't ever let me hear you say that about yourself again, Ty Borden, _eh-veerr_! You honestly have no idea how strong you are!" she admonished.

"But you don't know…,"

"I don't know what!" she roared as she knotted forward on the chair. "That you had it about as shitty as it gets when you were a kid and found a way to pull yourself out of a childhood like you had and make something of yourself? To be the kind of guy people just seem to know they can trust the minute they meet you?" Charlie sighed and retreated slightly as she began to soften her pose, "To be the kind of guy I never thought really existed, like some kind of fairy tale-knight-in-shining-armor who came into my life to rescue me when I had all but given up on believing things like that could ever happen?"

Ty was dumbfounded, not so much because of her words, but by her resolve, considering the thoughts of mortality that must have been swirling around inside her mind. "Wait a minute, how did this turn into being about me?"

"It _is_ about you, Ty, because you are one of the few people I know I can count on when things get tough, and we both know what's coming. I need for you to understand that you can get through this, and giving up is _not_ an option, for either of us!"

Ty thought about what Charlie had said, and then he asked, "So, what have the doctors said, exactly? What did they advise to you about starting treatments and…?"

"There won't be any treatments, Ty, at least not after..., not after I get my affairs in order and see that my daughter will be taken care of after I get to the point where I can't do it anymore."

"But you have to fight this! You have to…."

"We have already talked about this, Ty," she interrupted by softly brushing his lips with the tips of her fingers. "We both know the only effect all those treatments would have on me now is to prolong the inevitable. I have seen people I know, people I love and care about, go through this, and I thought back then if it ever happened to me that I couldn't put the people I love through watching me fade away like that, so…."

"OK, I understand what you are thinking, but let's not be too hasty with decisions this important." Ty tried desperately to think of a way to change her mind, at least to make her take the time to better consider her options, "Look, how about this? Would you at least agree to come with me to talk to Bar? Let me call her and tell her what is happening to get her up to speed, and then we can go meet with her and see what we think afterwards?"

Charlie thought she had already determined her path, but when she heard the passion in Ty's voice as he refused to accept defeat from the unseen threat that had snatched away their future, speaking as if they were a team and not two individuals in a separate struggle to survive, she realized that she wanted to do what he asked, if not for her own benefit, to help the one she had come to think of as the one true love she had always waited for to come to terms with their fate in his own time. "OK. Maybe that is not such a bad idea. We should go see her, so, go ahead and give her a call. But right now, I have other plans."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking…, since I have the most handsome and wonderful guy I know all to myself, _aaannnd_ a little time alone, that we could go up to the cabin and spend some quality time together…, that is, if you think you are up to it?"

Ty was shocked that the idea had even crossed her mind, but when he saw the need to be loved shining so brightly in her hopeful eyes he got up out of his chair and scooped her up from where she sat cross legged next to him and carried her up the stairs.

"Don't use up all of you energy, Doc, because if there is anything left of you after I get finished with what I have in mind for you right now, we are going to go back to the house and get Sammy so you can teach her how to catch Ol' Bill's big fat cousin out of that river, just like you taught me!"

* * *

Sammy squealed when she nearly fell from the gentle push of the current against her waders as she bobbled over the slippery rocks to where Ty waited for her in the middle of the lazy river. Charlie giggled at her clumsy daughter, so eager to get out to the spot her hero had picked out to start the fishing lesson he had promised to her after the success of her mother catching Ol' Bill, the biggest fish any of them had ever seen out of this river, at least.

"Sammy! Slow down! Those fish will be still there in the two minutes it will take you to get there, if you don't fall in first!" the young girl's mother chuckled.

Charlie had brought along her new GoPro Hero waterproof camera to make videos of the eager child as she impatiently thrashed through the water toward Ty. In the silence beside Ty earlier in the day she had decided that the best gift she could give to her daughter for the years to come would be to document their best days together before she would be rendered unable to spend quality time with her like she wished would be possible. These videos would be Sammy's window into her past someday, and right now creating them was the closest thing to happiness a dying mother could find in the uncertainty of the days ahead.

The afternoon went by so quickly that before any of them noticed it a cooler evening breeze brought to their attention that the day was nearly done. Shadows from the hills dwarfing the valley below dimmed the sparkling water as it danced around the rocks lining the riverbed and the three fishermen waddled along carefully trudging toward the bank near the gazebo.

A hero already cast in stone to the five year old, the leader of the fishing party carried the impressive stringer and held Sammy's hand as the worn out little angler beamed at her first catch, and the second and third she had managed to bring in with her mother's experienced help as Ty had caught it all on camera.

Sammy held on tightly to Ty's gentle grip as she slipped for the umpteenth time trying to navigate the slippery stones that seemed much larger after an exciting afternoon spent with the people she loved showing her how to do something she thought of as being so grown up.

Charlie was already waiting at the gazebo and yelled to them from above, "If you two don't hurry up those fish are going to be too old to eat!"

"We're coming, Mom! Just hold your horses!" using one of her great grandmother's favorite quips.

* * *

Enjoying fresh caught fish sitting around the glowing fire pit alongside a beautiful river was the kind of thing Ty had always thought of as the perfect family moment. It was something he had experienced only once before at Eagle Lake when he was young. His father had made a rare attempt to spend time with him and his mom for an entire weekend of camping and fishing and sadly, it was one of the only pleasant memories he had of the three of them together.

He sat and watched as Sammy wound down from explaining how she was going to tell Clint and Margie about the many fish she caught and made her mother show her the recording to make sure she had proof since the fish were soon to be long gone as evidence.

"I think it's about bedtime, Sammy, don't you!" Charlie suggested.

"Yeah, OK!" her daughter admitted, and then she scooted out of her small chair to get up on her tip toes and give her a long hug that Charlie stretched out for as long as she could. Sammy then bounded toward Ty and gave him the same hug as she had offered her mother and said, "Thank you, Ty! This was the best day, _ever_! _"_

 _To be continued_


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The prince held Amy tightly as they kissed, but hesitant at his rushed embrace, the center of his attention pulled away to glance around the too quiet barn almost hoping for any sign of the other workers or security people who might interrupt them, but with no one else in sight she took a deep inhale to ward off the inexplicable difficulty she was having with keeping her stomach in check and forced a smile back to her suitor hoping to calm herself enough to let the moment progress.

Eager to move the proposition along, Ahmed put his hand at the small of her back and unlatched the gate of the nearest stall before ushering his tottering manager inside.

She noticed the space was small and sparkling clean, especially for a horse, and empty except for a stack of straw neatly arranged two bales high off to the left. Uncomfortably queasy and disoriented, Amy paced nervously around the perimeter of the cubicle in hopes of replenishing an abnormal lapse of energy. "Let me get this straight," the bemused horse trainer pushed back at the momentum of the tide that had seemed to be ebbing, "So, you really think that I would rather be here, all by myself at this villa, in Spain, instead of with the team like we had always talked about?"

"Of course you will, Amy! Have you not taken the time to notice how beautiful it is here, and all of the facilities you will have at your disposal? What is not to like about all of this privacy instead of trudging around Europe with the responsibility of running my team?"

"It's…, it's just that I can't get past the issues I have with Anwar and the way you have handled that whole situation with him. I don't understand why you have chosen him to run the team instead of me. Why are you trying to hide me away from everyone instead of helping me to show them what I can do with your horses, like you promised?"

"But, Amy, I have decided to place you here because I felt Anwar…."

"Woah! Place me?" rebuffed the immediately reinvigorated head trainer.

His patronizing defense of Anwar, evidently having used his family's clout to sidestep any just punishment for his assault of her friends, grated at Amy's last thread of tolerance, "That's what you call it? _Placed_? I say reassigned without my consent _,_ that's what I would call it!"

"But you are not listening to me, Amy! Think about…."

It was too late to back down now. The country-forged unwillingness of a stubborn cowgirl to be told what to do squashed any reservations she had about speaking her mind. "No, _you_ are the one who is not listening!" her tone straining at the mounting frustration hastening from Ahmed's evasive behavior. "You have done nothing but disregarded my questions about Anwar and why I am here instead of doing my job, where I should be! You told me he was going to be punished for what he did to Aleah and Rasha! _What the hell happened with that?_ Instead you have rewarded him for his despicable actions against at least three of your female employees! I know two of them were our friends, Ahmed! Anwar is nothing more than a sick, demented criminal who should have been punished, even _castrated_ as far as I am concerned! I cannot believe you would choose someone like him to represent your team and _your country_ to the world instead of me!"

"Amy, wait! Let me explain!" he said calmly, trying to quell the misgivings of the hand-picked proprietor of the new operation in Spain before he lost any more of his advantage. "When this place became available to me and I knew it should be yours the minute I saw it! I knew you would enjoy living here and training my stallions in privacy, away from all the distractions of the meddlesome press following you everywhere you go!"

"Forget all that!" she shouted. "What is the big deal about getting me away from the attention I got when I was with the team? It feels like you are changing the reason I came back, Ahmed, not to help me promote my career, but to isolate me from the very people that I hoped to compete with, or even work with someday! I thought you said the whole world should know how well I work with your horses and that you wanted to help me show what I can do with them, but now you want to hide me away so no one even knows where I am or what I can do as a trainer?"

"No, Amy, you only need to think about the kind of life you will have ahead of you here before you come to these conclusions!"

"No, Ahmed, what I need to know is what kind of hold Anwar has on you to make all of his crimes disappear like they apparently have! How could you let him get away with what he did to Aleah and Rasha, and who knows how many other victims that we don't even know about?"

"Amy, we cannot necessarily prove his actions were criminal! I have tried to explain to you, that it is more complicated than you know! This situation was beyond my control!"

Plainly disputing his haughty esteem, Amy left no doubt as to her opinion of his proclaimed ascendancy, "If not the next king of your country, like you tell me you are supposed to be, then who decides things like that? Does wealth or status determine everyone's fate above and beyond their actions where you were raised?" she charged. "Because it sure as hell doesn't where I'm from! This isn't right, _none of it_ , and if you are OK with the way this situation has been handled then it looks like I have been kidding myself about you because I thought you were a better man than that!"

She stormed toward the gate to leave him, but his clasp on Amy's shoulder spun her around to face him. The prince took a split second to calm his temper and then went on the defensive hoping to stall the unbendable questions, "Like I said, Amy, it is complicated!"

"How complicated is it to know that your security people were involved?" Amy threw down the accusation she had been secretly harboring. "I have been thinking about what happened to Rasha when those men came into the stables that night to take her away. They came through the door you used when you brought me inside. It has a security pad, they had to know the code to get in! How do you explain that? And while we are at it, how do you explain someone in your security staff taking those things out of my room and _somehow_ ending up hand delivered to Ty all the way back to Alberta? Do you still deny any part in that?"

"Of course, Amy! I would never do anything to cause you such unhappiness, as I can see that it did! I will look further into this matter and I will see that whoever did these things to you will suffer the most severe consequences of his actions! I promise this to you, Amy! As for Anwar, once again, I can only share with you that his situation is more complicated than you could be expected to understand. I cannot share all of the details of any arrangements made between him and our council of elders."

The answer was not the one she was looking for, "But _you_ are the one who replaced me as team manager, _right_?"

"No, not exactly…,"

"Then _who_?" Amy demanded, tiring with what she was beginning to see as nothing more than royal pretense.

Seeing that her respect for him was rapidly diminishing, Ahmed accepted that Amy was not going to settle for less than a believable explanation this time, and scanning the barn for prying eyes and ears he quietly offered a more clarifying response, "It was the council of elders, Amy. As you know, I was summoned by the council in the next step in my ascendancy to the throne. These men are holy leaders who have the power to make the most important decisions regarding the future of my country and its people. Even the Emir has to respect their requests."

"So, you are saying I lost my career as manager of the royal jumping team because of a bunch of old men sitting around a campfire making political decisions for you?" she scoffed, imagining a tribal gathering of biblical proportions.

"Yes, I am afraid that is true, in a way," the prince answered in an uncommonly candid attempt to allow her unprecedented access to the inner circles of royal family business. "Amy…," he searched for any justification she might accept, "my country has been ruled by my family for over one hundred fifty years. The council of the elders are the highest authority there is. They make decisions based on ensuring the security of our country and its people. _My_ people, Amy, because after the last session this past Thursday, they voted unanimously that I am to be the new Emir!"

Amy saw the anticipation of excitement building in his eyes upon breaking the news to her, "Emir? And now, you have everything you have ever wanted?" she asked dully.

Offended by her less than enthusiastic reply, "Yes! But, because of my responsibilities as the new Emir I was required to make many concessions to the elders, some of which I very strongly opposed, and some of which affected our agreement as to your position with the team."

"How could you let them do this to me?" she asked, openly showing her feelings of betrayal. "To them, it's just a job, but that job was all I have left, Ahmed! The one you said that I deserved! It's who I am, or at least who I was. And, where does Anwar fit into all of this? How could the elders ever believe he was the right choice for the position, all things considered?"

The prince lifted his hands to Amy's shoulders knowing he needed to recapture her trust, "The elders are not even aware of the arrangement between us, Amy." he explained, "It was not my decision to replace you from the team. It was not what I wanted for you! But as a result of the demands of the council, the decision had to be made. That is why I decided to buy this villa myself and move you here instead. It will be better for all of us!"

Ahmed could see an out of control fire spreading in the unyielding stare of the unreceptive horse trainer and decided he needed to expand his account of his situation to appease her, "You see, Anwar is the youngest son of one of the richest sheikh's in our region. His family has considerable influence over the financial system, enough so that their cooperation is of a critical nature to my country's financial stability. All of the council members insisted that I guarantee him to have an official title, a paying position within the government, and the only place we could find to put him that he might possibly be effective was as head trainer of the equestrian team. He has no experience with anything else!"

Ahmed's attempt to rectify the discontent of his accuser was ill received and Amy mocked him with a cutting smirk, furious and mistrustful of the far-fetched account from the Emir-elect of her being displaced as the most up and coming female horse trainer in the world in favor of a common pervert, in her notion, over a greedy political pursuit of money and power. "So, even the future king of a wealthy little kingdom like yours couldn't save my simple little job because its religious leaders said to hell with their morals took the money instead? If some family's money is more important than any regard whatsoever for right or wrong, or your word to me, for that matter, good luck with making any _important_ decisions on your own!" she denounced his authority out of spite, but affecting her more than anger was a deflating tear inside her chest at realizing she could never hold the most important place in the prince's heart, and the cold crushing regret of having broken the heart of the only one in which she had.

"Amy! I hoped that you would understand my position! I will be the new Emir of my country! My loyalties are first to my people, but I bought this place for you to enjoy your life, to do the things you always wanted to do, for us to have a private place reserved for just the two of us to be together!"

The stark reality of her new situation was sickeningly clear, "You say those things like you know what I want. How could you know if you never even bother to ask me? Am I supposed to live here alone and wait for you to come to pay me a visit whenever you feel like it? Am I supposed to hang on and hope for a life that we were never meant to have as anything more than…, what? What am I to you, Ahmed? Just another one of your mistresses? How many more are there, huh? How many, just like me, have you 'placed' here and there around Europe, and God knows where else?"

"But, I am in love with you, Amy! I will take care of you! I will make sure that you have everything you…"

"You keep saying that! You keep saying you will make sure I have everything I need! What do you think I need, Ahmed? Do you have any idea what I really need to be happy?"

The outraged royal was stunned at her resistance to his proposal. Any other woman would be thrilled to take advantage of such a ridiculously generous offer from a man who was on the verge of so much wealth, power, and inexhaustible possibilities. Maybe she had forgotten how much she liked the way he pursued her and the reasons she had left her home at that pitiful little ranch in Alberta to be with him!

Amy tensed from the shock of Ahmed forcing her backward until she was firm against the bales of straw. He bent over and pulled her lips into his, a heavy-handed left palm around the back of her neck to restrain her, and lingered while she attempted to squirm away.

Enraged and defiant of her rejection, Ahmed surged with ascending supremacy when he released the kiss remaining close enough that Amy could not escape his heated breath, and through gritted teeth he spoke to his mistress with an anger never before exposed to her, "I bought this villa myself, only for you, and brought you to this place so you can be with the horses you love, the finest horses in the world, to breed them and train them, just like you wanted! I took you away from that run down ranch, from the people who treated you like you could never be more than a silly little cowgirl, and away from that _stable boy_ who wanted nothing more than to hold you back from your dreams, and I made you into a horse trainer known around the world! Just like you wanted!"

His free hand briskly clasped her chin when she tried to look away, forcing her frightened glare back to his eyes, "I will not tolerate your disrespect any longer, Amy! I will get enough of that from the wife I was forced to marry, one that never wanted in the first place!"

Her skin cringed from fear as her predicament escalated. Amy realized that she needed to break away from Ahmed's grasp long enough fight back, or at least to scream for help, before it was too late. The soft leather dress boots she wore offered little in weaponry with squared off toes and low heels, but she twisted just enough to drive a swift knee into the prince's groin causing him to fold over in a painful stupor long enough to strike a second time with a hard stomp of her heel into the top of his foot, wriggle herself free, and desperately spring toward the gate, "Help! Is anyone out there? Help me, please!" but as she clung to the gate, the much stronger man covered her mouth from behind and used his momentum to ruthlessly toss her onto the floor.

The struggle for freedom was critical now. Ahmed dove on top of her and held her wrists above her head with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, using his weight to wear her down as she thrashed beneath him to try and get away.

It seemed like minutes had passed and Amy's strength was fading despite her will to fight back. The attacker finally decided she was subdued enough that he released the hand holding both of her wrists to unbutton her jeans and yank the zipper to the bottom.

Another jolt of panic rushed through Amy's body, thrashing beneath him in steadfast determination to fight to her last breath, and suddenly her right arm freed from his grasp and the shortened but effective fingernails furrowed four rows of torn flesh across his cheek.

Ahmed only became more empowered by her struggling to get away. Instead of making the mistake of releasing his grip on her wrists again, the aggressor pinned the offending hand underneath his victim and pushed her close enough to the wall that she was unable to pose a threat with it while he grasped the other. Using his new advantage, the emboldened prince ripped her shirt open and lowered his face into her breast and nipped her vigorously enough to cause her to let out a scream, then positioned himself until he was able to force his way between her thrashing knees, aiming his aching groin into her jeans in a prelude of what was in store for her when she finally wore down.

As her fight to free herself intensified, blood flowed profusely from the crazed man's face marking Amy's neck and blouse in red stains. The attacker thrust into her with a merciless vengeance, his right hand firmly around the middle of her throat squeezing with enough rage that Amy's vision distorted into dark blurring splotches, blackness fading in around the edges as she gasped for air.

Lost in his rush of dominance, the prince again reached down to nip her on the left breast. The pain lit off a charge of desperate cowgirl anger and when he got a little too close Amy bit Ahmed's right ear hard enough that she could feel the lump of flesh left in her teeth when he abruptly coiled his torso upward with his chest heaving above her and shuddered out a guttural howl that sent her blood running cold. It was the same unmistakable shriek she had heard coming from the stall the night her friend was attacked. ' _It was him! Ahmed was the one who attacked Rasha_!'

Amy turned her head to spit out the chunk of ear and through the outer limits of her consciousness she thought she saw a glimpse of movement behind her attacker just as a metallic whack at the back of the prince's scull caused him to fall into a lifeless heap on top of her.

Gabby rolled Ahmed away from her rumpled friend onto the floor and put her hands on either side of Amy's face, "Amy! Oh my God! Amy! Can you hear me?"

Cautious not to further any possible unseen injuries, Gabby put her hand behind Amy's back to help her sit up against the wall when she failed to rise under her own power. "Breathe, Amy! Take slow, deep breaths! Can you hear me?" she pleaded to her friend noticing the blood oozing from her lower lip, red blood stains all over her face and blouse, and the blank searching stare as the besieged woman coughed while struggling to regain full consciousness.

After a few deep inhales Amy could begin to hear her friend well enough to give her a nod, but the fiery needles piercing all around her scalp brought on a cold sweat as if someone had splashed her with freezing water and the intense knot in her gut forced her to heave the trivial contents of her stomach onto the floor.

Amy knew that it was over. Her dream had become an unbelievable nightmare and she clutched at her friend fighting to stay upright, "We have to get out of here! Please! We have to get out of here, _now_!"

 _To be continued_


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Gabby pulled Amy up under her arms and helped her to sit on the bales of straw. Without hesitation the surprisingly assertive rescuer knelt to one knee beside the unconscious man on the floor and said, "I have wanted to do that from the first time I met you, Senior Ahmed!" and chuckled, tossing the shovel to the side and unfastening the button of his pants.

Amy watched in total confusion when the woman purposefully unzipped the fly and yanked Ahmed's slacks and boxers down to his ankles leaving him totally exposed, "My God, Gabby! What are you doing?"

Her personal assistant bent over the prone man and reached in her pocket, pulled out her phone, and studied her subject to determine the best angle for her photos. After carefully snapping three times, "There! These pictures will be very useful when the time comes to explain to his "Council of Elders" about our violating the prince's diplomatic immunity!" and chuckled with obvious self-gratification.

"Gabby?" Amy persisted, "What the hell is going on? We need to get out of here, _now_! You have to believe me when I say that there are some very bad people who will be noticing Ahmed is missing and they will do terrible things to us if they catch us here, especially when they see him like this!"

"I will call my uncle!" replied the native Spaniard. "He is a very powerful man. He will come to get us and take us someplace safe."

"Wait! My step grandmother has a client here in Barcelona! I just remembered that she told me to call him if I ever needed help and that he would know who I am if I called. Let's see…," she studied the contact list on her phone, "it was something about Santa Claus?"

"Do you mean, San Nicolas?" Gabby asked with a strange expression." My uncle is named Alberto Alejandro San Nicolas, the head of security for the royal family!"

"YES! That is the name! He is your uncle?"

"Yes, my uncle Alberto! That is exactly who I was going to call! He will come to get us and take us out of here!"

"I am so sorry to drag you into this, Gabby. I didn't intend for you to sacrifice your job here at the villa because of me," Amy thought out the repercussions.

"Don't worry about me, Amy." The smiling woman reached into the other pocket of her jeans and pulled out a wallet holding her official identification complete with a picture and badge. "I am Gabriela San Nicolas. I was sent here in an undercover investigation regarding the disappearance of Aleah Hashim who was reported missing recently by a trusted friend of my uncle. Her name is Lisa Stillman."

"Lisa?" the astonished step granddaughter gasped.

"Yes! She contacted my uncle and told him of your friend and how she was concerned about the way she disappeared. We also spoke with your sister, Lou Fleming-Morris, who initially raised the possibility of foul play in this country as well as others, and convinced my uncle that we needed to proceed in the investigation which has now spread to three other countries, at least the ones who will talk to us about a sensitive matter such as this."

"So, you knew all along that Ahmed was the one who did it?"

"We were reasonably sure he was involved after checking the dates of a few of the disappearances. They coincided with the prince being one of the last people to see each of them. Now, we have the proof we needed to confirm our suspicions."

"A few?" Amy asked, as if she needed convincing that many others had suffered a worse fate than hers.

"Yes. We can put the prince at seven suspicious events where young women have been reported missing. You are very lucky, Amy, to have people watching over you like they did. Without them raising hell to my uncle and convincing him to stretch the rules of diplomatic immunity, we would never have been able to come to this conclusion, at least enough so to do something about it."

"But, how are we going to stay safe from his guards, or even get out of here in the first place?"

"Do you think you can walk?" Gabby asked.

A few easy steps leaning against her friend convinced Amy that she was recovered enough to try, but her head was still swimming over nausea churning in her stomach. "Yeah, I can make it, but how are we going to get past the guards? They are not your ordinary security people. For that matter, how did you get past the guards when you came to the barn?" the groggy victim asked.

"Come, you will see!" Gabby said as she tugged Amy along in her first steps out of the stall and into the more vulnerable exposure of the barn's alley.

Her eyes darting from one end of the open space to the other and hoping that her scuffling with the prince had gone undetected by his guards, Gabby towed Amy with a firm hold under her arm until she paused at the end wall inside the feed room.

"Whhh…, what are we doing in here?" The disoriented woman understood she was dazed, but knew enough to question standing in a place that would have them trapped if they were discovered.

"You will see!" Gabby answered, reaching for a weathered board on the wall and giving it a twist. A door swung open as if they were in the middle of a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" movie and behind it was a passage carved into the rock underneath the barnyard.

"This tunnel connects to the pantry beside the kitchen of the main house. It was built in anticipation of invasion during the big war. The former owners were dear friends of my family. I have spent countless hours playing in here as a child."

"But, they will know!" Amy paused with uncertainty about their safety.

"No, Amy, I never got around to telling the prince or his people about it."

After entering the tunnel and seeing the door close securely behind them, Amy started to question the pieces of muddled memory, "How did you know that I was in trouble?"

"I came into the house from the garden and saw the bottle of pills beside the sink. Since you seemed to be a bit unsteady while you were walking to the barn with the prince, I thought it would be best to use the tunnel to see if you were there of your own will. I was not sure if you were able to protect yourself if the pills were what I suspected them to be, and I did not trust the prince with your safety." She then recaptured Amy's elbow and gave her a tug. "This way, I will hold on to you, just in case."

* * *

The anxious women both rushed to pack their bags, neither of them ever intending to return to Casa Junto al Mar. After only a few minutes the detective tapped a prearranged knock at Amy's door, and following a careful glance down the hallway, showed her the way to the servant's stairs around the back.

More dedicated than Amy expected her personal aide to be, Gabby poked her head around the outside exit to check for one of the prince's goons standing guard, but did not see any movement and prompted Amy to follow her, both picking up their luggage by the hand grip so as not to make too much of a racket in the quiet of the darkening evening sky.

Gabby aimed for one of the riding trails that cut through the woods toward the highway in the valley below. Flanked with taller grass on either side, it presented a better chance to stay hidden from the guards if they were watching for movement, which she assumed they would be.

The two fugitives were feeling more secure after managing to cover about seven hundred meters of the trail, but nearly screamed when a flashlight blinded them from ahead.

"What do you girls think you are doing out here?" a large man asked as he approached them.

"We, uhh, were just going to party with some friends of ours for the weekend. You know, a girls night out!" the native said without as much as a hint of being intimidated.

"I don't think so, Miss! We have specific orders not to let Miss Fleming off the property, and that means you too, if you are with her! You must turn around and return to the villa, NOW!"

Amy's knees were weak with fear thinking the two of them were going to be held captive until they were secretly shipped back to Ahmed's home country where she had heard terrible things about the way they treated prisoners. No one from back home at Heartland would ever really know what had happened to her, disappearing from the face of the earth just like Aleah and Rasha.

"Put down your flashlight, Senior! A low voice ordered quietly, coming from the man's right side. When the prince's guard turned to try and see who was there his flashlight shone in a younger policeman's determined face, a pistol drawn and trained squarely upon him, but to his surprise another voice from his left demanded more urgently, "He said, put your down your flashlight, Senior, and keep quiet, or I shall be forced to use this this 45 caliber persuader in my hand!"

The large man froze in his tracks.

"Gabriele? Amy?" the second man called quietly.

"Uncle, is that you?" the relief in her voice cut through the darkness as Gabby answered back to someone she could trust.

"Stay where you are for a moment, my dear, while I have a talk with this gentleman, si?"

"Si uncle! We will not move!"

Amy stood trembling beside her newest friend, her heart thumping in her chest from the ominous near miss, and the two women watched as the officers snuffed their flashlights and tied the guards hands behind his back with a plastic tie, gagged him with a fist full of bills retrieved from his own wallet stuffed into his mouth and wrapped by a similar restraint, and marched him all the way back to the middle SUV parked in the driveway.

The pair of escapees was amazed at what they witnessed next. The Spanish rescuers unfastened the man's belt and used it to tie his ankles securely together and sat him beside the rear wheel facing away from the house. The other guards would find him, eventually, but long after the trail to the highway had cooled too much for them to follow.

The two Spanish detectives returned to the anxious women sporting ear to ear grins, "That should remind His Royal Highness how much weight his crown carries in _this_ country!" causing the four of them to stifle their laughter as they returned to the business of escaping the wrath of what would surely become the most pissed off prince in their neck of the woods.

"I will bet you never thought you would ever see anything like that, huh, Amy?" Gabby chuckled, "Oh, I must reclaim my manners! Amy, this is my uncle, Alberto Alejandro San Nicolas, and this is, Leonardo San Nicolas, his oldest son who happens to be the director of Mossos d'Esquadra, the fancy name for our police force, and at this moment, my favorite cousin!

"Thank you all for helping me from who knows what back there!" Amy gushed. "How can I ever repay you?" expressing the most sincere appreciation she could muster after the shattering events of the past few hours and nursing what was quickly becoming the worst migraine she had ever experienced.

Two stealth black official cars were parked just off the road close to where the trail broke out of the woods and Alberto opened the rear hatch to put the women's bags inside his car. "As for repayment, Miss Fleming, we will think of something! I understand from your grandfather's lovely wife that you are a pretty good horse trainer, si?" he spoke through a friendly smile illuminated by the cargo light inside the storage compartment. "I would hope so, with all the worry a single cowgirl from Canada has caused today!" he chuckled. "I happen to have a pampered horse she sold to me who needs to be shown who is the real boss," he smiled again. "Do you think you would be able to help me, as soon as the time is appropriate, of course?"

"You got it Mr. San Nic…," she started to agree before his interruption.

"No! No! My friends call me Alberto!"

"OK, Alberto! I would be more than happy to have that talk with your horse, as soon as I…."

"Amy! What is the matter?" Gabby asked when she noticed her friend slump toward the police car to steady a suspicious wobble.

The impaired woman tried to respond, but nothing could escape the vise like grip triggered by a searing pain shooting from behind her eyes and down into her jaws locking them tight.

Recognizing that something was terribly wrong, Gabby pleaded to her friend, "Amy, talk to me! Amy!" Gabby urged a response and watched her cousin catch Amy under her arms as she keeled unconscious into his chest. "We need to take her to the hospital, _now_!"

 _To be continued_


	28. Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Ty sat motionless in the chair beside his fidgety girlfriend who adjusted her position at least once every minute and bounced one of her nervous feet in midair, depending on which one was suspended over her crossed knee. A firm grip of his bicep in both of her hands was the anchor that kept Charlie from getting up from her seat and fleeing the office as she leaned into his strength, completely renouncing the uncomfortable situation and pretending she did not need help from strangers to fight her newest and most serious battle.

Through gentle but persistent appeals, Ty had persuaded Charlie to go ahead with the first visit to the oncology clinic after a session with Dr. Barbara Bilson convinced her that it could prove to enhance her time with Sammy and her grandparents if she would be willing to give the doctors a chance to try a new series of treatments ready for clinical trials. Bar had arranged a meeting with the director of the trial in Charlie's behalf, and because Dr. Montgomery was an old college friend of Bar's, the first appointment was made for the next day after she had called him to set it up.

The preliminary visit was going reasonably well, although the anxious cowgirl had much rather have been in her truck making the rounds picking up livestock manure for the landscaping business instead of being in some sterile clinic letting strangers poke and prod around her body all day, and then leave her sitting for what seemed like hours without any word, and then poke and prod some more. What was the point? If they knew where the problem was, just get in there and kill it. That's the way she would do it, if she knew how.

Charlie was thankful that her grandmother had come to relieve Ty at noon so he could go into the vet clinic for a few hours work and take over his 'rebel watch,' as Margie called it, to make sure her notoriously independent granddaughter had someone to distract her while she waited, and to make sure that she did not bolt from the clinic when the first opportunity presented itself.

* * *

A puppy wagged happily at the front of his cage when Ty opened it to fill the water bottle hanging on the inside. He picked up the month old Beagle and scratched him between the ears and spoke to the animal in celebration, "Well, Oscar, tomorrow you get to go home with your new parents. From the looks of them, I would say you hit the puppy lottery 'cause they think you are just about the cutest little critter they have ever seen."

Just as the busy vet put Oscar back in his cage and closed it he heard someone coming in through the rear door of the clinic. The double doors pushed open and to his surprise, Bar peeked through the crack, "Anybody here?"

"Hey, Bar, c'mon in? What brings you to our fair little vet clinic this evening?"

"Oh, look at this little guy!" she cooed at Oscar who was far from finished with being the center of attention.

"Wanna hold him? He thinks he needs to be held all the time, so…"

"May I?"

She giggled like a little girl, Ty thought, and chuckled as he opened the cage to retrieve the excited little dog one more time and handed him to his overdressed temporary assistant.

Bar cooed some more at the pup and scratched his ears as she redirected her attention to the vet, "I went by the clinic and talked with Margie. She is one, tough, lady. Charlie is very lucky to have her in her corner."

"Yeah, Margie is one of a kind, that's for sure," Ty returned a knowing nod.

"Charlie seems to be doing OK on her first visit. I just wanted to see how _you_ are handling it, though," Bar said as she quietly noted her usual evaluation of his demeanor.

"I'm OK, I guess. One day at a time, right?"

"Yeah, one day at a time, but you are going to have to dig deep for what is coming up, Ty. We have no way of knowing how Charlie will react to the first treatment, or any of the ones after that for a while. This is pretty new stuff they are trying," she reminded her younger friend.

"I am very aware of that, Bar, but, what can I do? All I know is that I am going to do everything I can to try and make every day count for her and Sammy, and to try and give them back a little of what life is taking away from them."

Bar leaned back onto the desk behind her, "Ty, I have come to think of you as a friend, and you are one of the most stand-up guys I have ever met, but I am worried about you because you have a tendency to forget about yourself and plunge into everybody else's problems. It is an honorable thing to feel that way, but if you can't take care of yourself, you sure as hell can't take care of the ones you are worrying about."

"I get that, Bar, but it's what makes me feel like I am here for a reason, to put everything I have into making things right when they aren't," he argued. "Otherwise, I'm spending my life for nothing, the way I see it."

"What am I going to do with you, Dr. Borden? If you were half as much of a prick as most of the guys I talk to this would be a lot easier. I suppose that is a bit unprofessional of me to admit, but we _are_ standing in a vet clinic and I happen to be petting a cute little puppy while I am trying to dish out advise that you are probably going to ignore anyway," she scoffed.

"You got me this far, didn't you? You are the only shrink I ever met that made any sense, or gave a shit about her clients, so no matter what you think, I listen to what you say."

"That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, Ty. Thank you for that."

"Saying you give a shit is the nicest thing anyone ever said you?" the amused veterinarian chuckled. "And you worry about _me?_ "

The good-humored psychologist flashed a wide grin, "A girl takes a compliment where ever she can get it," and enjoyed a laugh to herself while the vet kept busy with finishing his evening rounds. "We haven't talked about Sammy? I hear through the grapevine that you have been spending a lot of time with her. How's that working out?"

"OK, for now," Ty said of his personal appraisal. "But, it's one thing to have her thinking we are doing fun things, like helping me with chores around the vet clinic or feeding her animals at the ranch, and then going to her home to her mother and great grandparents. That will change when she figures out her mom is sick and her life is never going to be the same again."

"What is it that you think you can do to make Sammy feel better about it?" Bar attempted to pry more information out of the man who would save the world, if he could. "Judging from everything I know about you, you must have a plan already."

Ty scruffed a flop eared rabbit in the last cage between its ears and closed the door before nervously glancing first at the floor, and then raising his determined gaze straight into Bar's curious eyes, "Yeah, well, to be honest, I have been meaning to talk to you about that…"

* * *

A sudden ring shattered the silence of the darkened room. Lisa jolted awake off her husband's chest and rolled toward the nightstand next to their bed on the upper floor of the W Hotel in Barcelona, coughing to clear her throat enough to answer. "Hello?"

"Ms. Stillman…? Lisa? This is Alberto. We have taken Amy out of the villa!"

Lisa's heart leapt to full speed at the adrenaline filling her exhausted body as she listened to her friend's account of the extraction. Three days of lackluster sleep at knowing Amy could be in danger had kept she and Jack at their wits end awaiting any word of how the investigation was progressing. "That is wonderful news! Is she OK? Where is she? Can we see her now?"

"Lis? What is going on?" Jack gruffly asked.

"It's Amy! They got her out of the villa and she is safe with Alberto! They have taken the prince and some of his people in for questioning!"

The chief security officer broke into her explanation to Jack, "Lisa, I have to tell you that Amy is not OK. I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but she was rather viciously assaulted and suffered come cuts and bruises. I know you would be very proud of the way she fought back. She was able to inflict considerable damage to her assailant in her own defense, but beyond that, it seems she has suffered some kind of attack after we got her safely out of the compound. The doctor thinks it was something to do with a previous injury to her head. She is in the emergency room at the hospital right now. I am afraid it is serious and I suggest that you come here to be with your granddaughter as quickly as possible."

"Thank you Alberto. I am sure you did everything possible to keep her safe. We knew there was a risk, given her health, which is why we were in such a hurry to get her out of there and bring her home for treatment. We will be there as soon as possible. Please call me if you hear anything before we get there, _please_!"

"Of course, Lisa. I will be here waiting for you," he tried to reassure his friend.

* * *

Thirty minutes seemed to exceed half past forever as Jack hurried out the door of the cab and helped his shaking wife exit behind him. They rushed into the emergency ward and stopped at the desk to ask the receptionist to help them find their granddaughter. Just as Lisa thought she might have to jump in between the reluctant late night receptionist and her exhausted and unnerved husband, a man's voice interrupted them, "Lisa, Jack, I am here!"

"Alberto! Where is she?" the urgency of concern for his youngest granddaughter's welfare made clear from the old cowboy's desperate plea to a man he had never met.

The large man wrapped his nervous longtime friend into a comforting hug and received a vigorous shake from her husband's strong, work hardened hand. "Please, follow me."

Walking down hospital corridors was seldom done under pleasant circumstances and Jack was haunted by the many times he had entered a hallway like this because a friend or loved one was fighting for their lives, and sometimes losing the battle. The last time was only a year ago, when Amy had been seriously injured by one of the prince's stallions, and now the continuation of the same injury had come back to haunt them. He thought of all the decisions that were made back then, if anything could have been done differently to prevent this relapse, and Lisa squeezed his arm to bring him back to the here and now since she knew her husband well enough to sense his anguish over self-imposed guilt.

"Jack, they are doing everything they can to help her. She's going to be OK, you'll see!" Lisa offered, but secretly understood the dire consequences of Amy's condition after the talk she had had with Dr. Milford in Calgary and his concerns over complications that could be brought on by delaying her surgery for too long, praying that it was not already too late.

* * *

Sitting in a claustrophobic space was not something the lifelong outdoorsman did well. Jack continually got up from his chair and walked down the hallway as far as he had access to go, staring helplessly at the doors keeping him from where Amy was clinging to life for the third time as he remembered the near misses she had already overcome. _'I should have done more to protect her._ '

Jack had suspected Amy was getting in over her head with the prince and the kind of promises he was making to her, and his lack of adequate guidance had cost his youngest granddaughter dearly. If only there was something he could do to make it up to her. He would do anything, anything in the world to make it all better for his beautiful, sweet Amy, and the thought of possibly having to call Lou and tell her that they had lost another member of their family would be more than he could bear, if the worst came to pass.

Pushing back at being consumed by outright exhaustion, the senior member of the Bartlett-Fleming clan shuffled his way back toward the waiting room and noticed Lisa popping her head around the door knowing he was due to come back and fidget in his chair for another fifteen minutes before giving in to his nervous restlessness and making another round to the operating room doors, willing them to let him come inside and see to it that Amy knew he was here with her. When she saw him, his eager wife emphatically waived her hand to hurry him along.

The frustrated old cowboy rushed through the door, Gabby unfaltering in remaining to encourage his wife with a reassuring arm around her shoulders, and joined them standing in front of a tired looking surgeon in scrubs explaining how Amy had survived the initial operation and was in recovery on the floor above them.

"How is she, doctor?" he asked, needing to catch up on what he missed.

"Mr. Bartlett?"

"Yes, I am Amy's grandfather."

"Well, Mr. Bartlett, Amy is a fighter! She is stable now, which is encouraging considering the recurrence of trauma to the back of her head and the emergency surgery in which we had to reinforce the damaged vessel. Swelling caused a blockage which in turn caused her to lose consciousness. We had to restore the blood flow as quickly as possible, and we have successfully accomplished that by placing a stint in the affected area."

"What does all this mean, doctor? Will she recover and be healthy again? Will she be able to carry on with her life like she is used to after an operation like this?" asked the nervous grandfather. "You said initial surgery. She will need more after today?"

"Yes, I am afraid so, Mr. Bartlett, but any further surgery will have to wait until Amy is strong enough. Today was just to keep her with us long enough to allow that to happen. As for her prognosis, only time will tell. We were able to get to the damage reasonably quickly, thanks to the detectives who brought her in, but the next twenty four hours are critical, and if we get through this phase as well as we hope, then we can begin to bring her out of the induced coma and see if there are any further complications we need to deal with."

"You mean, when," Jack said dryly.

When the doctor tilted his head trying to understand what the older man meant, Jack understood the gap in cultural backgrounds made himself more clear, "I think you meant to say, _when_ we get through the first phase, because my Amy is strong, and she is going to get through this, you'll see."

"Of course, Mr. Bartlett. _When_." The doctor placed a reassuring grip on Jack's shoulder, gave a hopeful nod to Lisa and Gabby, and turned to leave them while they absorbed the news.

"Oh, doctor, when can we see her?" Lisa remembered to ask.

"Let's give Amy a little more time to regain her strength. When she is completely stable I will have the nurse come to tell you when she is ready for visitors. Keep in mind that she needs to rest and recover at her own pace. Until then, please, just be patient and let her body tell us when it is ready to wake up."

"Thank you, doctor," Lisa extended her business like smile and turned back to her husband, wrapped him in her arms, and buried her face into his chest. "We need to call Lou."

 _To be continued_


	29. Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

Lou studied the numbers in her accountant's monthly report she had just downloaded onto her laptop. She had a habit of starting at the bottom line at the conclusion of the report and then scrolling back to the beginning, _'Not too bad!'_ she thought as she gave herself a mental pat on the back for deciding to go ahead with the sale on a new line of tack during a usually slow period of the year.

Good sales reports always pumped her up, a personal reward after choosing to reinvent her life away from the promising high stakes investment broker world of Wall Street to a small business owner in flyover dot on the map as proprietor of a feed and tack store, restaurant, and a dude ranch located in the foothills of Alberta. Her gratification grew from not being forced to share credit for all the successes of her small business decisions and most of all, not having someone farther up the corporate ladder to steal her praises from the board members of a large company who barely knew, or cared, that she even existed. _'Next week we need to think about our clothing line, maybe get some new t-shirts made up. Something like, "Maggie's, a Hudson Tradition est. 1952."_ ' A click on her busy sticky note app popped up a blank yellow patch on the laptops screen, _"Call Walter's Printing about a quote for 200 t-shirts. Have them send a draft for my approval of the design before they print!"_

A satisfied smile still dominated her expression when the phone laying on the table beside her laptop began to vibrate.

"Lisa? How is Amy? Were you able to talk to her yet? Was she happy to see you? How is grandpa holding up? Did he manage have that talk with Ahmed that he promised me about?" imagining the crusty old cowboy showing the arrogant, self-entitled prince what Amy's entire family thought of his tactics to get her embattled sister to go away with him like he did. "I tell you, if I ever see that sonofa…,"

Weary of having to douse the excitement of her eldest step granddaughter so impatiently expecting to hear of a victorious rescue of her little sister, Lisa broke into the stampede of questions, "Lou, I have some news."

All of Lou's enthusiasm collapsed upon noticing the surprisingly somber tone, suddenly aware that the visit must not have gone as well as they all had hoped. "Is she alright? Did something go wrong? Lisa, she OK?"

"Well, let me start at the beginning. My friend, Alberto, the security official that I told you about, sent his niece, Gabriele, who is a detective herself, to work at the villa and keep an eye on Amy to be sure she would be safe during the investigation, as was the plan. But this afternoon Gabby overheard Amy in trouble in the barn. Apparently she and Ahmed were arguing about the way he gave someone else her job as manager of his equestrian team and wanted her to stay in Barcelona to run his new villa instead. Amy was not taking it well, obviously not happy with the change, and they got into a serious argument. Ahmed ended up attacking Amy and was about to really hurt her. When Gabby got to them, he was on top of Amy on the floor and was choking her until she was nearly unconscious. That's when Gabby picked up a shovel and whacked him on the back of the head and knocked him out cold!"

"What? I hope it flattened the back of his head for good!" imagining the satisfaction she would have felt had it been her taking that swing with the shovel.

"More about all of that later..., Anyway, to get to the point, Gabby called her uncle and cousin, backed up by only a couple more of their most trusted detectives, who were family members as well, I think, to come and help them. They had pre-planned a way of getting both of the girls past the guards without having to involve the entire police force and media right away because, to be honest, I'm not sure how politically incorrect all of this is. It's something about international diplomatic immunity and not having any authority to stop a dignitary of a foreign country from doing whatever he wants, with no repercussions from local law."

"Oh-my-God! Lisa! I _knew_ underneath all that fake charm that Ahmed was a sleez! Good to know he finally got some of what he had coming to him! So, is Amy OK? I hope she finally learned that she can't trust just anybody and everybody to be who they say they are!" confirming a bit of older-sister _'I told you so!'_ inside her head that she would never say out loud.

"Lou, there is more. After they had already gotten the girls safely off the prince's property, Amy suffered some kind of seizure and passed out in one of the detective's arms. She was OK one minute, and the next, she just collapsed. The detectives rushed her to the hospital where they had to do an emergency surgery to repair a blockage near the injury she had last year because of being kicked by Ahmed's horse. She's…, it's…, Amy is in trouble, Lou! The doctors, what little they have been able to tell us so far, say it is a very sensitive procedure and it was critical to her survival."

A cold numbness poured over Lou as the reality of her little sister's condition replaced all momentum behind the mixed bag of questions she had been ready to unleash, dimming her critical analyzation of the still unfolding story. A deafening static inside her head shattered any illusions of this terribly trying time in all of their lives finally being over. "They think she might…, they think she is in danger?"

"Well, yes, Lou," not wanting to understate the obvious risk to someone trying to accept terrifying news of a loved one from half way around the world, "Any time the surgeons have to be inside the skull…." A shudder rocked the older woman at the thought of a stranger's hands performing such a delicate operation on someone her entire family loved, knowing what could be at stake, "There are never any guarantees, you know?"

"You and grandpa are there, at the hospital?" she asked, trying to put the missing pieces in place.

"Yes. We just spoke to the doctor who performed the surgery. We wanted to know all we could find out before we called to tell you.

"Grandpa! How is he, Lisa?" realizing the state her over stressed grandfather must have been in and worrying about the risk for his health as well.

"He is Jack Bartlett, that's how he is!" trying to ease Lou's worrying. "It ain't pretty, but he is hanging in there!"

"Please, keep an eye on him, Lisa! What if he has another heart attack over this?"

"I know, I worry to, Lou, but he is doing better than I would have thought, for now, at least. I will do everything I can to keep him as calm as possible, I promise!"

"I know, Lisa. And I know having you there with him is helping him more than you could know."

"Listen, I probably should see about trying to get Jack to lie down and rest for a bit. We were asleep when we got the call, so I know he is as exhausted as I am because it is…, 4 am here, and they tell us that Amy is stable and resting so it is going to be a while before we can see her anyway."

"Yes! Get some rest, both of you! And, please, let me know as soon as you know anything new, no matter what time it is, OK?"

"Of course, Honey. As soon as we hear anything, I will call you, I promise."

Lou stared at the phone after it went dark at the end of the call. Eerie silence crept around her as she sat alone under the dimmed lights, trying to reassure herself that everything that could be done for Amy was being done, that she was in good hands so far away from home. The irking notion that things would be much different now had she managed to keep her sister here and under the care of the doctors in Calgary that she trusted. "What have I done? How could I have let that sonofabitch take her away like that?" she asked the empty room. "What if she is never the same, because of me? What if she doesn't even make it through this?"

* * *

The usual tranquility around the foothills surrounding 8-S ranch was upset by the roar of the red Dodge dually truck as it sped down the driveway much faster than would have ordinarily been deemed safe, but the lethargic woman lying in the seat next to him had Ty committed to break every rule there was to try and get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Charlie had been sick to her stomach following her first treatment at the Foothills Medical Center in downtown Calgary. After an overnight stay for observation she was released to recover in the more comfortable surroundings of her own home. Complaining the entire next day of discomfort and nausea, too weak to run to the privacy of the bathroom and vomiting several times into a pail Margie had made ready beside her bed, Charlie was exhausted and ill tempered at the disappointment over her first experience of 'the day after'. The thought of this feeling inside her as being the new normal was maddening, if not terrifying, and she was quickly losing hope that there would be any enhancement of life, as had been expected by the doctors.

Ty lay beside Charlie while the others finished with the evening dinner. He stroked her hair, made sure there were fresh ice chips ready when she asked for one to put in her mouth, and tried his best to offer her any comfort he could think of, wishing he could somehow do something to take all of her hurting away. During their first orientation at the clinic, the team of doctors had advised them of possible side effects, and Ty was quick to notice when she began to fade, checked her vitals, and scooped her up in his arms. He held the barely responsive patient tightly to his chest as he made his way down the hallway to the front door and yelled, "Margie! Charlie needs help! Call the hospital and tell them we are on the way!" and ran as fast as he could carry her straight for the truck.

The trip into Calgary usually took forty five minutes, but when Ty checked the clock on the dash he had used only thirty to reach the emergency entrance. The ER staff was already waiting at the door because of Margie calling ahead to alert them her granddaughter was in route and it was only a matter of seconds before they were all hurrying down the polished white corridor toward the ominous doors at the end of the hall.

"Wait here, please!" the nurse held up her hand to Ty as the gurney carrying Charlie shot through the open door into the well-equipped emergency room.

Just as calamitous as the frenzy of people rushing down the hallway, an unnerving silence was startling after the doors closed behind his stricken girlfriend and left him alone wondering what to do next.

" _This is all my fault_ ," he said to no one in particular. " _All I wanted to do was to help her feel better and look what has happened!_ "

"Mr. Borden?" a nurse asked as she carefully put her hand on his forearm.

"Uh, yeah, how did you know…?"

"Charlene's grandmother told me to look after you. She and Clint are old friends of the family," she explained. "It is not your fault, Mr. Borden. Sometimes the body doesn't respond like we hope it will, especially in trials, but I assure you that the people in that room are the best you could ever hope to have helping her right now, and they will do everything they can to make sure she is going to be OK. Now, why don't you come with me so we can get the paperwork started? You can help me with enough information to get us going until Charlie's grandparents can make it here to fill in the more personal details, OK?"

"Uhh, yeah, OK, I'll do whatever I can."

* * *

An hour had passed without any word from behind the closed doors separating Ty from knowing how well Charlie was responding to the team's efforts to stabilize her. Time took on a different meaning under these conditions. Every second somehow managed to stretch into an agonizingly slow pace and thoughts seemed to have all the more time to ramble about random things in between the coherent worrying over the matters at hand.

Slumped low in one of the supposedly uplifting bright blue waiting room chairs, Ty rode the sporadic journey of his thoughts as he tried to bring himself to accept this latest setback. He nearly catapulted clear of the seat when a firm hand landed on his shoulder and doubled his heart rate until he saw that Clint had made it in to the waiting room to join him.

"Sorry, Ty! Any word yet?" he asked, aware of Ty's surprise.

"It's OK. Uh, no. No word yet," he answered. "The nurse behind the desk said she was an old family friend and she would let me know as soon as she had some news."

"That would be Jenny. She is the granddaughter of one of the bronc riders who used to win a lot of my buckles when I was still promoting rodeos. I should probably go say hello. I'd bet she has some paperwork for me to look at."

"Yeah, I got the paperwork started, as much as I knew how. She said she would have it ready for you when you got here," he remembered.

Clint started to take a step, but paused to turn around so he could look Ty straight on, "Thank you, Ty, for taking care of our girl and getting her here safely. Why don't you go on home and get some rest. I know you have to go to work tomorrow."

"I'm not going anywhere, Clint, at least not until it's time for my shift at the clinic. I'll get us some coffee and have it waiting for you when you are finished with Jenny."

The older man nodded and turned toward the woman waiting behind the desk who smiled when she saw him. ' _Damn good young man,'_ he thought. _'Maybe things would have been different for both of them if Charlene had found him a long time ago. Maybe Sammy would have had somebody besides us old worn out rodeoers left to take care of her. Damn the luck anyway!'_

* * *

Lou came through the door of Maggie's restaurant at her usual 9 a.m. and went into her office to unload an arm full of paperwork she had done the night before. Still groggy from the restless night worrying about most of what was left of her family still dealing with their own struggles in Barcelona, she came back through the door of her office and headed straight to the coffee pot only pausing long enough to pour a steaming cup, glance over the new batch of feed and inventory orders waiting on the memo board beside the cash register, and spin on her heel toward the office to begin another day of steering Maggie's toward a profitable future.

When she swept around the end of the counter, the diligent business woman noticed a tousled man slouching over the table beside the window, "Oh, my, God! Ty, you look like hell warmed over! What happened to you?"

As she slid into the chair opposite her tattered friend it was apparent that all was not well with the little brother she never had, "Ty, are you OK?"

It took a few minutes to catch his unofficially adopted big sister up with his current situation and finished by saying, "We should be able to take her home in a day or two. The doctor said it is a matter of adjusting her dosage until she can handle it better. This treatment is too new to know how it will affect different people. To be honest, I think they rushed it a little because she is so far advanced. I don't know what I'm going to do, Lou. I was just getting back to being me, and now, this. I feel responsible for the setback and I feel so helpless at doing anything useful for Charlie, but I can't stop thinking about Sammy. What's going to happen to her now? Clint and Margie love her to the end of the world and back but they are in their seventies now and a five year old is just too much for them, or she will be soon. The thought of that little girl being left without her parents is killing me."

Lou wanted very badly to tell Ty about the condition of his former fiancee, but empathizing the burden he was already carrying, decided that maybe it would be best to leave her own worries unsaid, for now.

"Oh, Ty, I am so sorry to hear that Charlie is so ill. I was really happy for you to have found that family. They are good people. It is such a shame that things like this happen to people like them, and to you, Ty." Her heart was heavy for her friend, one she knew had suffered far more than she thought anyone his age should have had to endure. Leaning across the red checkered table cloth, Lou slipped her hands around Ty's as a reminder that she loved him like family, "You know you can still count on all of us at home if you need anything, and I mean _anything_ , right?"

"Thanks, Lou, but my biggest concern, after making sure Charlie has what she needs, of course, is what I am going to do about Sammy?"

"What do you mean, what _you_ are going to do about Sammy?" she asked, unsure of what he was implying.

"OK, Lou, this is between me and you, got it?"

"Of course, Ty, but what…,"

Overcome with the need to share his heart with someone he could trust, the pensive single man let his conscience free, "I have been thinking about what it would take, if I have what it takes, to adopt Sammy! That is why I stopped by. I wanted to see if you might be able to help me think this through, because you have gone through it already with Georgie, and you know me as well as anyone, so…,"

Lou was stunned into a hush, no small feat considering her usual nature, but her longtime friend had just knocked the wind out of her with his confession.

Watching his trusted friend's unsuccessful effort for words, "I know what you are thinking, Lou, that it's a bad idea because you don't think I can handle a five year old girl on my own. I get it. But…,"

"Uh, no….NO! That's not what I was thinking at all," she lied, "but, are you sure you know what you would be taking on with a responsibility like that? Do you think you are ready after what you have been through this past year? And, the authorities might have a problem with you being single…, and the way things went for you after the breakup." Lou gritted her teeth because of having to be so harsh, but thought it best to get straight to the important issues facing an obviously torn young man at a precarious crossroads in his life.

"There is no official account of any of those things. Lisa and Bar saw to that by keeping everything off the record. I _have_ to be ready, Lou. All I know for sure is that someday, way too soon, a little girl that means a lot to me is going to lose her last parent, and her great grandparents simply won't be able to care for her much longer, even as much as I know they want to do it. According to what Charlie has told me, there isn't really anyone left close enough to the family to take Sammy in, so, I don't see that I have a choice, Lou, because I am never going to let her be without someone to watch after her like she needs, no matter what. I think I have to do this, for Sammy, for her mom, and for me. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't know she has somebody to make her feel safe, and maybe someday, to feel loved like she deserves."

Lou had known Ty through most of his growing up years. Nothing ever seemed to come easy for him, and she has seen his worst along with his best, but she also knew the look in his eyes when he had set his mind to something he believed in and how he had an uncanny way of seeing his goals through to the end. She would never be the one to stand in his way if he wanted to do something with his life, if it was this important to him, and gave his hands a reassuring squeeze, "OK, but, the extra time, and the extra work, not to mention the financial side of adoption are things you are really going to have to take a hard look at, you know?" the experienced adoptive mother asked.

"That is the reason I came by here on my way to work, to see if you think you can help me to be ready," he shrugged, "you know, when the time comes."

The burning determination from within his emerald gaze was all she needed to see.

"I'll make a deal with you," she offered. You bring Sammy out to the ranch at least once a week for a while, maybe even stay over every now and then when the camping weather is good, and we can see how it goes. Sammy and Katie will get along fine, two can be easier to watch than one, if you can believe that, so that will end up helping both of us, and spending time alone with her away from the people and places she knows as normal right now will let you have a better idea of what you are getting yourself into. And then, if it looks like you can handle it, we will all get behind you and do whatever it takes to help you adopt Sammy, if that is something she is willing to accept. You have to remember, Ty, she is going to be losing her mom, and that is something no little girl is going to understand, so you will have to be prepared for how she reacts to losing the most important person in her life."

"Thank you, Lou! This is what I need to do, I just know it."

"Another thought," Lou interjected, "Have you talked to Clint and Margie about this yet? That is another big question you are going to need an answer for."

"I know. One step at a time, right? So…, do we have a deal then?"

The still cautious woman held out her hand to offer a shake, "We have a deal, Ty, but I have to warn you that I am going to be completely honest about what I think. I will tell you if I think you are getting in over your head. This is too important for too many people to lie to ourselves if we see that it just won't work, so don't you even think about disowning me if we disagree on things."

"I would expect nothing less from my 'big sister'," the prospective parent smiled and hugged Lou tightly around her neck, "Yeah, we have a deal!"

 _To be continued_


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Hope is a fleeting thing when fate dangles it just out of your reach. A stream of wires and tubes linking the patient to life sustaining fluids and monitors assuring her condition was stable kept hope alive for the sitters in the room beside her bed, but with no changes in Amy's prognosis over the past four days any concept of hope was again being tested.

The doctors kept trying to reassure Jack and Lisa that as long as her condition remained steady that they should not lose faith in the fighter their granddaughter was known to be.

"I'm goin' outside for a while, Lis," the fifteen year older husband told his wife. "I get the heebie jeevies sittin' here like this."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she agreed. "Do me a favor though, when you come back in, bring me a cup of coffee and…, a _donut_ from the cafeteria, please," her face lighting up at giving in to a guilty pleasure.

Jack stopped at the door and returned an accusing nod, "Seems to me, that wasn't such a good idea the last time _I_ had it."

"Screw it! I need comfort food!" she retorted.

"That's my girl!" he came back with a twinkle returning to his eye as he chuckled to himself and disappeared into the busy corridor.

They were both used up in worrying about all the 'what-ifs.' Each of them had experienced most of what life had to offer, both good and bad, and the plain truth was simple, to take whatever happens as it comes and do the best you can to deal with it.

The biggest challenge of all was in the waiting. Progress cannot be rushed or bargained with, only expected in its own good time.

Not sure if she could still feel her feet, the step-grandmother twisted her ankles a few circles to test them before she pushed to get up out of the reclining chair beside the resting patient's bed and peered out the window to see if she could spot her restless husband making his frequent tour of the hospital grounds.

Listening to the ever present pulse of the monitor keeping track of a precious heartbeat had eventually become unheard background noise until it changed, or worse, missed a beat. Without knowing for sure what had snapped her out of her daydream, Lisa turned to the room and tried to pick up on what had alerted her senses that something was off, something in the air that she was not seeing as she glanced around the bed looking for anything obvious, but not yet finding it. She held her breath another few seconds as she listened, and then she caught it out of the corner of her eye.

A twitch of an index finger burst her spirit open until her own heartbeat overshadowed the electronic one which had dominated the space for days on end, and she darted from her perch by the window and touched the back of her step granddaughter's hand. "Amy? Honey, it's Lisa! Can you hear me?"

There was no movement, but a flood of hope had been stirred once again and the rejuvenated care taker whispered, "Amy? C'mon, honey, your grandfather is going to want to talk to you when he comes back. He came all the way to Spain to see you! Can you believe it? That is twice, now, we have gotten him to come to Europe, and he came to see you when you wake up!"

The door opened and the shift nurse came rolling through it pushing a cart full of cleaning paraphernalia. "Nurse, I am sure I just saw her move her finger! And her breathing has sped up in the last few minutes. Do you think she might be waking up?"

"Let's just have a look and see how Amy is doing this morning!" the cheerful attendant replied.

After taking the clipboard from the slot at the foot of Amy's bed, the woman covered in flowered scrubs began to compare the statistics from the previous notes, "It is possible that Amy's condition is changing," she analytically surmised. "I think I should get the doctor to have a look for himself."

Lisa's brow raised in concern, unsure if this was in fact good news.

"Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Stillman!" when the nurse realized the rattled relative's uneasiness. "This is a positive development, I assure you!"

"What's goin' on, Lisa?" the rushed voice coming from the open door.

"Come're Jack! I think our girl is wanting to wake up! Say something to her!" his wife beamed, reinforced by the nurse's confirmation that she was not letting her mind play tricks on her.

"Amy? It's your grandpa! We sure have been missing you! Why don't you go on ahead and wake up now? I need to know how you are feeling, so, come on, wake up for me, whatta ya say?"

Astonishingly, Amy lifted her chin upward and arched her back compulsively trying to escape the unknown things confining her movement as the fog began to lift enough for her to blink her eyes and attempt to get her bearings.

"Woah, now!" Jack tried to quiet his granddaughter. "I'm right here, Amy! You are going to be fine! Just take it easy and relax. Look at me, Amy. I'm right here!" he pleaded.

The monitor telegraphed its patients stress by doubling its signal in accordance with her heartbeat. The nurse put a needle into a vial she picked up off the cart and injected a small dose into the I.V. hanging from the stand beside the bed. "This will calm her while she wakes up. We want to keep the stress as low as possible for a while longer just to make sure she is healed enough to go to the next step of recovery. See! I told you Amy is a fighter!" the nurse smiled knowing the ones standing beside the bed needed a calming influence just as much as her younger patient. "Now I will go find the doctor," she finished by placing a reassuring hand on Lisa's shoulder and turned the cart toward the door.

* * *

These past thirty minutes held more of the same old seat time as the previous days in the all too familiar waiting room chairs, but now the older couple knew the time was near for them to know more about the fate of their loved one and the challenges they would face together in getting their lives back to the way they liked it, slow and steady.

"Jack? Lisa?" The doctor found them anxiously waiting. "I think I can safely say that Amy is doing much better than could have been expected, considering the trauma she suffered. She seems to be rather eager to get her recovery started, although, understandably she is confused as to why she is here in a hospital bed, so when you are ready, you may go back to her room and be with you granddaughter! I wish to express that we need to keep her calm and to remain still for at least the next few days. Let's not let her try to do too much too soon. Keep her as calm as you possibly can and we will probably have her out of here in a few days!"

Jack wasted no time in retracing his steps he had made so many times between the waiting room and his granddaughter's bedside, Lisa hanging on to his elbow with both hands trying to keep up.

Amy saw the old man's greying mustache stretch across the widest smile she had seen from him in years. Tears blurred her vision as she tried to blink them away and focus on the two people she had been missing so much and held out her open arms to welcome them.

It was all Lisa could do to let Jack take his turn first, but the reunion pulled at her heartstrings in knowing how much these two loved ones needed each other right now and joined in the happy crying that dominated the room.

After a long hug, Lisa stood and smiled her trademark smile and said, "It's so good to have you back, Amy! We have all missed you more than you can ever know!"

Still hoarse from having oxygen piped down her throat for days, Amy's eyes curiously darted about the room, "Are you the only ones here?"

Lisa noticed the odd look of disappointment cross the recovering young woman's face and she knew immediately what was coming next. "Yes, honey. It's just me and your grandpa, for now," and lovingly patted the back of her wrist.

"Oh, OK." she croaked and cleared her throat. "I just thought maybe Ty would be here. He has always been here for me when I needed him. Guess he's out on call?"

Jack was thrown off guard, just now catching up with his confusion. "Amy, do you know where you are?" he asked, looking up to Lisa intending to have her play along with his testing the unknown waters of Amy's memory.

Her eyes scanned the room for anything familiar, but hospitals had the same feel to them no matter where you were and she did not see anything to indicate a specific location. "Calgary, I guess? Been here too many times lately!" she tried to make light of the tension, but now the question seemed to hold more importance.

"No honey, I'm afraid we are all in Barcelona.

Disbelief shown across Amy's face as she strained to remember why she was not in Canada. "Spain? Why would I be in Spain?" I was supposed to go to Paris, but I decided not to go. I thought it would cause problems for me and Ty if I went, so…."

"No honey. You did leave home to come to Europe. Don't you remember that?"

"No! I decided to stay home, with Ty. I remember leaving here to go home and tell him that I decided the job wasn't what I wanted anymore, not if it was going to make it harder for us because of my being away for so long," observant enough to sense the awkward skirting of her questions, "Didn't I?"

* * *

Coming back home after a stay in the hospital was always a good thing, almost always, anyway. Charlie and her grandparents knew there would be a need to explain to the confused five year old why her mother was sick and not getting better, and to expect that there may be many more days for her mother to be away from home.

"When is Ty supposed to bring Sammy back home?" Charlie asked as she sat, spent from the walk into the house.

Margie answered, "He said he would keep Samantha until the end of his shift. I think he is leaving early this evening, at five, I think he said, and then he offered to stop by Maggie's and bring home our supper so I wouldn't have to worry about feeding everybody tonight."

"That's good." Charlie said as she lay back in the recliner to rest. "How has she been for him? Is he able to make her behave or is she still getting the best of him?" she chuckled, knowing how her daughter could make her boyfriend do the silliest things whenever she asked and took advantage of him at every opportunity.

"To be honest, sweetie, I think he has done a pretty good job with her, for such a push over!" her grandmother smiled. "He's got a long way to go before he can match that kid, though!"

"Hey, give the boy some credit!" Clint chimed in when he heard his girls having a laugh at his young friend's expense. "How many single guys his age do you know that would let a five year old girl tag along with him all day? Most of 'em would head for the hills at the very suggestion that he try it!"

"Yeah, I have to admit that he has done better than I thought he would," Margie admitted. "Sammy is crazy about him, though. Have you ever seen her take to somebody like she has to him? I believe he can get her to do things either one of us would have to fight with her about because she wants to please him so much. He isn't the boring old great grandmother or mean old mommy making her do her chores and such."

Charlie sat up in the recliner, "I think we should have 'the talk' with her tonight. I don't see her accepting our lame answers much longer, and I would like to do it while Ty is here with us, pretty much for the same reasons we have been talking about. Maybe having him sit with us will make it easier, somehow. Sammy trusts him, and I know that I can use all the help I can get, because, as much as I have thought about telling her, when I can actually see her face, I don't know if I can do it. Ty will help me, when I fail, if I ask him to. Is that OK with you guys?"

"Of course, honey!" they both agreed. "When they get here we will take Sammy to the kitchen to help us set up supper and you can get Ty aside and see what he thinks about being here to help explain what life is going to be like around here from now on."

"I will keep an eye out for them, Clint said, "and I will let you all know when they get here," dreading this evening as much as anything he could ever remember doing.

 _To be continued_


	31. Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

" _If I ever see the inside of another goddamn hospital again, it will be one day too soon!'_ Ty sat beside Charlie who lay in her bed asleep and wished, like every other day, that he could lift her up and carry her away to someplace where there were no despicable diseases like this, so relentless and unmerciful in the way it decimated a life as precious as hers. With all of the people out there in the world much more deserving of such a fate, why did it have to be her to suffer like this?

Five intensive weeks of testing during the next phase of the clinical trial had proven to be less than encouraging. With every change of dosage, days and nights spent vomiting away the possibility for much needed rest, and each failed result of improvement, Ty could see the light in Charlie's eyes beginning to dim with losing any remaining hope of winning this fight to survive, if not for herself, for her five year old daughter not to have her sixth birthday spoiled by her inability to fuss over celebrating the big day like every other mom would be able to do.

A movement caught his eye as Charlie stirred from her nap. She had nervously chatted herself to sleep after the previous days treatment had kept her up most of the night violently ill. Exhaustion was her constant companion because of the toll the new dosage took on her stamina. "Hey! Did you have a good nap?" he asked, turning away while he cleared the tears from his cheeks.

"Oh, yeah! Those drugs never fail to send you into never-never land, one way or another!"

She remained outwardly tough in the face of a cruel fate, but her mask was less convincing with the passing days and Ty continued to pretend not to notice. "Don't go all druggie on me now!" he chuckled. "We have a date at a _partaay_ this afternoon!"

* * *

After dropping Charlie off at the 8S ranch and getting her settled in to wait for Sammy's party later in the day, Ty took Margie aside and asked, "Don't let her do anything crazy, OK? If the buzz wears off from the drugs they gave her to help with the nausea she will want to help with the party and I think it could be risky to let her do too much right now."

"Don't you worry about that," the wise older woman replied. "I have a plan!" and pointed to a box of decorations for the table. "She can do that while she sits. It will keep her busy enough to let her feel like she is a part of the celebration, right?" and she winked to the serious young man taking the initiative to look after her granddaughter the way he had.

Just as Ty turned to leave Margie approached him in a rush and smothered him into a reassuring hug. He gave her a firm tug into his arms, neither of them saying a word until he felt her release an almost desperate hold and pull away, "You'd best be getting yourself down the road if you are going to get back here on time! Now, git!"

As he walked out onto the curved sidewalk, Ty took a pause thinking about the way impossible times bared the best and the worst of what everyone had inside them, and Margie McCrary was one of the few people that had readjusted his way of thinking about personal tragedies and how to best face them. He knew she had seen more than her share in losing her son, daughter in law, Sammy's father, and soon, her granddaughter ahead of her. He promised he would have a long talk with her one of these days about how she managed to make the best of the worst like nobody he had ever known.

Just before he stepped into his old GMC, Ty heard Clint approaching from the garage. "Hey, how'd she do today?"

He knew his face would give away any false assessment of her visit to the clinic, "It's getting harder for her, to be honest. I don't know how much longer she is going to put up with the way she feels after the treatments."

"Well, we do what we can," and Clint slapped the young man on his shoulder. "Don't be too long. You know Sammy will never let you live it down if you are late to her birthday party."

"Oh, yeah! She would hold my feet to the fire for sure! But, I think when she sees Katie with me and the present we have gotten for her that I will be in her good graces again," he smiled, bit his lip to keep up his courage, and got in the truck to start the engine. "See you in a bit," he called out the window and turned toward the driveway down the hill.

* * *

"There you are! Is the birthday girl all set for her big party?" Lou asked when she saw Ty come through the door of Heartland's ranch house.

"Oh, she's ready to be six, alright! Apparently there are a whole new set of rules and expectations that come with that age!" he laughed.

"Tell me about it! You would think that Katie is graduating into high school or something with the way she talks about being six on her next birthday!"

Ty sat at the familiar table in his old chair and let out a breath, "Being six…, the things we grow up thinking are the most important things in the world at the time. Do you remember your sixth birthday?"

"Sure do! On my sixth birthday, I mom and dad gave me Buttercup!"

"Buttercup? I don't think I ever heard you mention a horse called Buttercup," he chuckled.

"Oh, Ty, that was the coolest day of my childhood! It meant that I had the freedom to go riding by myself, as long as I got my chores done on time, and my school work finished, and I hadn't done something to piss mom off in the last day or two," she smiled to herself, "because she then had the leverage to take away something that mattered if I didn't toe the mark!" grinning at the memory when she turned away from the sink to see him sitting there looking into his empty hands clasped tightly together in front of him. "It also meant I had a buddy of my own, someone I could tell all my troubles to, and I knew she would understand, no matter what. This little pony you and Caleb found for Sammy will make _so_ much of a difference, you'll see."

Lou put down the knife she was using to dice tomatoes for dinner and scooted into the chair beside him. "Hey, I know it's gotta be tough, so, what's going on?"

Ty looked at the woman who for all practical purposes was his big sister and let the things he had been holding so privately come flooding out of their hiding places. When he stopped, all he could do was droop his head and say, "I don't know how much longer it's gonna be before Charlie gives up. I can see it coming, and to tell the truth, I can't say as I would have managed to handle it as well as she has done."

"I am so sorry, Ty, but it has been good for Sammy to come here and get to know Katie and the horses. She seems to genuinely enjoy doing chores together with Katie. I know Katie is thrilled with having a new buddy! It has been so cool to watch them doing little girly things together."

"I am glad that she at least has _something_ to look forward to. I am afraid she will end up resenting me someday for keeping her away from her mom while she is still here. Charlie just needs more time to rest these days, and if I can keep Sammy busy it makes it easier, you know?"

"You love her, don't you? Sammy, I mean? Most guys wouldn't be so involved with their girlfriends' kids, but you aren't most guys, are you, Tyler Borden?"

"She's pretty awesome. I wish I could show her that I want what is best for her and not have it backfire on me."

Lou knew her friend very well and saw the need to quell his predictable self-doubt. "I wouldn't worry about the way Sammy feels about spending time with you, Ty. I see the way her little face lights up when she sees you coming down the driveway to pick her up. She knows you care, and she knows you will take care of her. She loves you too, you know. A kid can't fake something like that."

"Thanks. It makes me feel a little better to hear that, especially from you. So, is Katie getting ready?"

"Yeah, she chased me out of her room so she can pick out her own outfit to wear, coming up on being six and all, so don't be shocked with whatever she comes out of there wearing," and laughed.

"Huh? Did I hear that right? It seems like you may be turning over a new leaf! You don't mind if Katie isn't color coordinated, spotless, and fit for a picture?"

"Nah. If there is one thing I have learned lately, it's to enjoy the good times while you can. She is growing up so fast! There will be plenty of time to worry about fighting over this and that later. God knows how quickly trouble comes into our lives, no matter how well we think we have it planned out."

Lou let that bit of hard earned wisdom soak in for a few seconds, and then she decided that she had put off sharing the news about his former fiancée long enough. "Listen, Ty, with all that is going on with you and Charlie, and staying busy at work and so on, I didn't think it was the right time to bring it up before, but I have some things I need to tell you…, about Amy."

She waited to see him brace himself, not having been prepared to think about that closed chapter of his life, and he let out a deep breath before she eased into filling him in on the misdealing Ahmed had tried to subject Amy to, about the brutal attack, and the rescue initiated by Lisa and Jack who were still in Europe overseeing her recovery. "Ty, did you hear what I said?"

"Uhh, yeah, I did," he reeled past his options, "but what does that have to do with me? She made her choices, and I am sorry for her that things didn't work out like she hoped they would, but she will land on her feet, like she always does. She is too talented to let something like that hold her back, like I would have done."

"Dammit, Ty, you need to stop thinking like that! Just because Ahmed used that line as a tool to upset you does _not_ make it true! I happen to know without a doubt that she was telling the truth when she said she came home to patch things up with you, and that she hadn't cheated on you with Ahmed, in spite of what you believe. Amy and I have talked a lot lately, about the way things happened between you two. As a matter of fact, she is having a hard time understanding the idea that you two aren't together anymore."

"What are you talking about, Lou? I think our last conversation was enough to clear up any misinterpretation about our relationship being over," he said, remembering how angry he had been at Amy when he showed her the box sent to him by someone who wanted to see him hurt and humiliated.

"She knows now what happened, Ty. That is part of what led up to the attack. She challenged Ahmed about it and some of the other lies he had told her, and when she called him out for it, he snapped and actually tried to strangle her! But I think Ahmed found out it is not a good idea to pick a fight with a cowgirl. He hurt her, Ty, but before it was over she kicked him in the nuts, broke his foot, and tore a hell of a gash across his face with her fingernails, and all that was before she bit a chunk out of his ear!"

"Jesus!" he reacted at trying to imagine what went on between his ex-fiancée and the man that took away his dreams, _'That's my girl!'_ he thought, and then a guilty smile tugged at his lips which caused Lou to begin to giggle.

"I know, right? That's the sis I remember! Even with all of that, he had her down on the floor, choking her until she was about done for, until her friend, Gabby, heard them fighting and grabbed a shovel and took it to the back of that sonofabitch's head!"

"Sooo…, what happened next?" now fascinated with the uppity prince's dilemma in spite of his feelings about the past.

"Gabby made sure that the deal with diplomatic immunity would not come back to bite them by gathering a little insurance before they escaped the compound."

Ty tried to follow the farfetched story, "Insurance?"

"Oh yeah!" Lou threw her hands in the air, framing the scene, "So, Ahmed, he's there on the floor, out cold, and Gabby pulls down his pants to his ankles, laying there naked as a jaybird, and placed his hand to make it look like he was having a party for one, if ya know what I mean, and took enough incriminating pictures to make sure she and her family would never be tested about that stupid diplomatic immunity thing."

"Won't his country try to retaliate? I would think that could cause some serious backlash from them."

Lou beamed with delight, "Maybe, if Gabby's uncle, the head of security for His Royal Highness of Spain, hadn't sent the Council of Elders the pictures and threatened to release them to the tabloids if they tried."

"Council of Elders?" still trying to keep up with the story.

"Yeah, a bunch of old religious men who run things in Ahmed's country. Turns out, they had just approved giving him the throne, like he wanted, but after this, they fired him, or whatever they would call it, and replaced him with one of his fifteen brothers, so I hear. As it stands, Ahmed will be the Minister of Agriculture for the rest of his miserable life!"

Ty thought about that for a couple of seconds, "Minister of Agriculture, in the Persian Gulf? They can't grow grass, let alone anything else!"

"Exactly!" Lou burst into a near hysterical laugh, causing Ty to join in despite his amazement.

Lou filled her enthralled friend in on the details of how Lisa had initiated the rescue by involving her old friend and his family to use their advantage of authority in Barcelona and put a protective barrier in place for Amy, which had fortunately saved her life. "The investigation has tied Ahmed to several disappearances of young girls in three separate countries, and after what Amy and her friends did to stop him in Barcelona, he will never be the king of anything! They made sure of that!"

Ty took another few seconds before he could respond, the slight hint of a smile dissipating from wounds not all that far under the surface as he had thought. "So, where is she now? Is she OK?"

Lou had hoped that easing Ty into accepting talking about the girl that broke his heart would pave the way before she dropped the other news of her sister's seizure and ensuing operations to repair the damage. "It has been slow going. Grandpa and Lisa have taken her back to their villa in France while she recovers from the operations. She has gotten well enough to walk again and I understand she is going to go back to Barcelona soon to work with one of Lisa's clients' horses as a trial to see if she still has what it takes to even approach a horse."

"Wait a minute. Walk again? Afraid of horses? What are you saying? How bad is she?"

"I am saying, Ty, that she nearly died. I am saying that I have talked to her on the phone and she couldn't be more discouraged than she is right now. In fact, she is still trying to come to grips with Lisa and Grandpa having to tell her that you and she are not together anymore. She woke up in the hospital room and one of the first things she asked about was why you weren't there like you always were before. I am not telling you this to make you feel guilty, I am telling you these things so you can try to understand just how much trouble she is in. She's really hurting, Ty. In fact, she still argues that she left Europe to come and fix things with you and that she would never have gone back if it was going to make you unhappy. She knows you are not together anymore, although she doesn't remember how it all happened without those of us who know filling in the details, as we understand them. She has accepted it as being the truth, considering everything else that obviously happened to her over there, but her life has changed completely and now she is left without a sense of direction or purpose, and I will tell you right now that I am very worried about her. I just thought it was time to finally tell you."

"How long ago did this happen? It sounds to me like it was a while ago."

"To be honest, it was the day before you came into Maggie's and asked me about helping you with Sammy. I could see that you didn't need that kind of news right then, so I decided to wait."

"What happens next? I would guess that she will be coming home soon, right?"

"As soon as she is finished in Spain, if that goes like we all hope it will. And you know Grandpa is chomping at the bit to bring her back."

"How did she come up with a client in Spain? This just doesn't make any sense."

Her client is one of the detectives who helped her get out of Ahmed's compound. Lisa had sold him a horse a while back and he says he needs someone to work with it to make it more manageable for his rich friends who come to visit his ranch. It will be the first horse she has worked with since she left here and given her physical and mental state, it will be a delicate situation for her, and probably as important of a session as she has ever had. If she can't do it, I am afraid she will never be able to get over losing who she used to be, and that includes not being your fiancée anymore."

 _To be continued_


	32. Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

Lou had finished with placing orders and the endless everyday paperwork at Maggie's and left early. She wanted to see how Katie and Sammy were coming along after several weeks' worth of riding lessons under Ty's direction. Moving slowly down the gravel driveway so as not to spook the small ponies in the arena, the giddy mother parked her SUV and walked across the grass outside the fence and climbed up the rails to take a perch at the top. "So, how are our two cowgirls coming along?"

Ty adjusted the bill of his Norton Motorcycle cap, glanced up to the mother of his second pupil, and stated, "If you ask them, they are ready to start trick riding so they can be a part of Georgie's act at the next Hudson Western Days Celebration."

"Ohhh, no! I'm not dealing with another one of my daughter's hanging upside down off the side of a horse, _or_ standing on their backs while they jump over a rail of burning fire! You two can forget that idea!" the exasperated mother warned, then tried to stifle a laugh. "So things must be coming along pretty well if you guys are ready for something like that, huh?"

"We're getting really good, Mommy!" Katie boasted. "Neither one of us has busted our butts all week!"

Lou's jaw dropped fully open, "Just where did that come from, young lady?"

The pair of miniature riders giggled and pointed to the center of the ring.

Ty prepared for a sure fire follow up tongue lashing and turned to face her, one eye squinting over a sheepish grin, "Girls, I thought we were going to keep that between just you and me!"

"Really?" Lou scolded, unable to subdue cracking a smile. "This is what you are teaching them?"

"Well, they said they wanted to be real cowgirls, so, I'm just doin' the best I can to get 'em ready for what it takes to be one!"

"Busting their butts is what it takes to be a cowgirl?" setting up an argument for a more palatable example. "Forget what he's telling you, girls. Everybody knows that cowgirls are the best examples of being a perfect lady that there is, _right coach?_ "

Ty's hands raised in surrender, "Listen to Lou, you two, I'm just the vet! OK, time to put up your ponies. Get 'em in the barn, and then what?" he tested their discipline.

In unison, the two fledgling equestriennes recited, "Put away the tack, brush 'em down, make sure there's some hay and water in their stalls, and last, but not least, give 'em a treat for not _busting our butts today_!" cackles screeching over getting the best of their coach.

"Ohhh, Kaaay! What was that?" holding his arms wide and gesturing to the girls about throwing him under the bus again, their knowing giggles wiping out most of the embarrassment, "Get to it, one more round and then to the barn!" then turned with his palms up in a shrug to the observer before opening the gate.

As she watched them ride one more circle around the arena before exiting onto the driveway leading to the stalls, the doting mother made no attempt to hold back the laugh as the sold out trainer gestured to the girls again, "Get outta here, you little rats!" When he turned to face the parent of his other student, "You are never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope!"

Both riders kicked the ponies into an easy trot, their giggles shaken from bouncing in their saddles, and Lou leaned on the post beside the man tending the gate, "You're doing a great a job there, coach!" she whispered. "Look at them! They are so proud and confident now. It won't be long before you will have them ready to go for a real trail ride."

"That ought to be special, me trying to keep those two girls in line out on the trail for a day," he smirked.

"Sammy looks like she is doing better, not just with her pony, but coming to terms with knowing her mom is…, not getting better."

"It has been tough, for everybody. I have seen some sad things, Lou, like little kids in foster homes who lost their parents with no one left to give a crap about what happens to them, or worse, taken in by people who abuse them and then end up back in juvy to start it all over again, but seeing Sammy refuse to accept that her mom is not going to get better is killing me, and her folks too. It's like we are trapped in this nightmare and the only way it ends is gonna be bad. Real bad."

"Remember what I told you, that we are here to support you the best we can," Lou said, attempting to turn the conversation around before a somber mood took away the next part of her planned conversation.

Ty returned her smile, "Thanks, Lou, I don't ever forget that you guys are here when I need you."

"Good! So, I have a proposition for you," she took the gate from his hand and eased it closed, stalling to give him a moment to get ready for what she had to offer.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I haven't told you, but Grandpa and Lisa are bringing Amy home tomorrow. I just wanted to give you a heads up so you wouldn't be surprised."

Ty straightened up, clearly trying to get used to the idea of Amy being on the same continent. He knew he would have to face her someday, but not tomorrow. "Yeah, well, I guess I'd better plan on making myself scarce for a while," mulling the options out in his head.

"No, actually, I was hoping that you might give us a couple of days to let everybody get used to being back home and get rested up from the trip, and then, bring Sammy back to let Amy work with the she and Katie for a while, just to see how it goes."

His head cocked in a contemplative twist, a doubtful scowl distorting his face, but before Ty could get enough words gathered for a sentence the promoter of the plan jumped into the heart of her pitch before he had the chance to reject it. "It will give you some time off, maybe to spend with Charlie and the family, and…, Amy really needs to do this, Ty, whether she knows it or not. She is so lost, and to be honest, scared to death of coming home. She thinks everybody around here will be laughing at her, thinking she is a failure, and that she won't have what it takes to work with horses, or mostly the people who own them. She has lost everything, Ty. She's lost who she is and what she is about, and I need to help her find those things again. This would be an important first step!"

Ty took a few seconds to absorb the rush of suggestions, deciding to let her run with it for a bit more before he outright refused to have any part of it and test his friend to see if her plan made any sense, "So, how did the training session go with the guy in Spain? Did she get his horse settled down?"

"From what Lisa has told me, Alberto was very happy with the results with his horse. Of course Amy hasn't forgotten how to analyze a misbehaving horse, it's just that she can't deal with people or the pressure of their high expectations right now. Alberto gave her plenty of time to let her work at her own pace, but she is so self-conscious and withdrawn…, Look, I think having her work Katie and Sammy is exactly what she needs to regain her confidence. In a way, she is in pretty much the same situation as Sammy right now. They both need to take the next step, no matter how scared they are. If we are lucky, they just might help each other to take it."

"Do you think she can handle the girls, I mean, the two of them might be a bit much for her, because you know how they can turn into a couple of live wires when they are together?"

"You have them practically ready to go as it is, but if Amy were to be the one to share in their excitement leading up to that first trail ride, I just know their happiness would rub off on her. You know what I am talking about! There is no way, no matter how crappy your day has been, that you can watch those girls getting into learning how to do something new and having fun, giggling and being silly, and not end up with a smile on your face too. It would mean so much for her to be able to show them a thing or two, just to get her off to a good start back here at home."

Ty pondered Lou's proposition before he spoke, "I would need to run it by Charlie first. I have no idea what she will think about Amy having anything to do with Sammy, for a number of reasons."

"I understand, but please, give it a try? You may be surprised at what she will say. It could be good for everybody. The Sammy and Katie love you, but having a _girl_ to teach them all the other stuff that you don't even want to think about approaching…" reasoned the mother of two young girls.

The vet-turned-trainer questioned her accusation, "Like what? I think I have done a pretty good job of clueing them in about all the horsey stuff they need to know for now."

"Oh, you have done a wonderful job teaching them about taking care of the horses and, _not busting their butts_ , and such," a slight impish twinkle in her eyes as she hesitated, "but…, what if you are out on the trail for a couple of hours and all of a sudden, one of them needs to pee, or…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa right there! I get it! Hadn't thought about that yet," he admitted. "Jeez! Who knows what else I missed thinking about?" he leaned back against the fence and forfeited his clout, "You have a point, I guess! I will ask to see if this idea of yours will fly with the one _I_ have to answer to."

"That would be great! Let me know how it goes. If Charlie or her grandparents need to come by and see the ranch, or anything at all, heck, bring them all out here to show them how Sammy has learned to handle her pony! That ought to make them comfortable with us taking care of Sammy," she offered. "This would mean so much to Amy!"

"But, do you really think Amy can handle it? Is she physically and mentally capable of dealing with those two?

Lou's expression went serious, "We won't let her fail, Ty. She just needs to remember who she is, and this will do it! I just know it!"

* * *

Ty tried to give due attention to the road, but the mile a minute chatter coming from the passenger's side of his old blue truck kept him nodding at the freshly turned six year old as she reaffirmed all the new things she had learned about horses, all the plans she and Katie had for their first trail ride, and how she could not wait to tell her mother how good she had gotten at taking care of Elsa, her new pony. It seemed like "Frozen" had taken over the world, so naming her pony after one of her favorite characters was no surprise.

There was no question as to whether spending time at Heartland had made a huge difference in Sammy. She had spent weeks being angry at the world and everybody in it, resentful at whatever was making her mom sick and nobody seeming to be able to do anything about it. To see the young girl preoccupied with good things, kid things, had been a godsend making Ty thankful he had friends like Lou to lean on when things got rough.

* * *

After dinner and a bath, Charlie spent far longer than necessary tucking Sammy into bed and opened one of her new books, "The Ten Men." Ty had given it to Sammy for her birthday on Lou's suggestion because of the child's advanced reading skills, a new challenge to keep her busy with things she could use to escape the harshness of reality, since she loved reading so much.

Clint sat in the den with Ty and Margie making relaxed conversation about his old Norton project. He needed Ty's advice about whether to buy new valves or just regrind his originals, not wanting to have a bad decision set him back when it came time to start the engine in a few more weeks.

"Your old valves are fine. If my engine was as nice as yours when I rebuilt it, I would have probably just changed the oil and went for it."

"Well, if you think so, that's what we will do. I'm ready to hear that baby run!"

"OK, you two, enough about that old motorcycle!" Charlie cut in as she slid into the sofa next to Ty. "What was it you said you needed to talk to us about?"

Ty looked the three of them over, wondering if he was about to overstep his good graces, "As you know, Sammy and Katie have been making pretty good progress with learning how to take care of their ponies, and, staying in the saddle," he smiled smugly.

Charlie raised an eyebrow, "Yeah, I heard about them, _and I quote_ , "not busting their butts…"

"I probably should have mentioned that…" he had to admit since he had been caught red handed, then perplexed, "Hey, how did you know about...?"

"Do you really think I haven't been talking to Lou and checking up on you?"

A little surprised, but not that much, he let his head bounce to the back of the sofa, "Might have known."

"Um,humm! I don't need any help teaching my daughter potty mouth! I do that well enough all by myself, when Grandpa isn't doing it for me!" flashing Clint a naughty grin. "From the way Lou describes it, I would say the girls are going to be ready to get their little butts in gear and hit the trail pretty soon," pinching her personal trainer of a boyfriend in the ribs. "Sounds like you have done a good job there cowboy."

"Funny you should mention the girls getting to be good enough to go on a trail ride. Um, Lou and I were kinda talking and…, um…"

"Will you just spit it out already?" the clued in mother scoffed. "You want to know if I think it would be alright if Amy takes over teaching the girls how to ride."

' _Aw, man! How the hell does she do that?'_ "Well, since you brought it up, yes, Lou and I thought it might me a good idea for Amy to help them with some things I never would have thought about…, you know, like, what to do if…."

Charlie and Margie broke out into a full belly laugh, "I wondered how long it would take before you figured out there were "special" things little girls would need to know that somebody like you would have trouble explaining," and they broke out in another fit of giggles at his expense.

"Somebody like me?" thinking he should probably be a little bit offended.

"You are such a rookie! Those two girls will chew you up and spit you out like a piece of gristle if they get you off by yourself and see how easily flustered you get with 'delicate' subjects," taking much amusement at the reddening of his cheeks.

The rookie trainer had to own up to the implication, "Yeah, I already have some experience with that. You have talked to Lou about this too?" he asked, as if he needed the official affirmation.

"I am the one who suggested Charlene call Lou this afternoon while you were still busy with your students," Margie admitted. "I am also the one who brought it up to her about how you probably had no clue what you were about to step in, so we thought it would be a good idea to ask Lou to give you a nudge in the right direction," smiling that Mona Lisa smile she picked up in one of her 'gotcha' moments.

"Did you go so far as suggesting who to have doing the helping?" now curious as to how deep the conspiracy actually went.

"We did." Charlie confessed.

"So, you are the one who hit Lou up about Amy taking over? You are good with this?" he asked at yet another reminder of how little he understood about the workings of the female mind.

"Under one condition…, well, maybe more than one, but we will start with this one. As long as I get to go along on that first trail ride, it's OK for her to get the girls ready."

Charlie had a talent for blowing his mind. Ty would have bet her resentment over any idea even close to this would have put an end to the whole thing faster than he could blink, but now it was a done deal.

Readjusting her position to sit upright, "That brings me to the next subject I want to discuss, with all of you. I have talked with Dr. Khorman and we have both agreed that it would be best to stop my participation in the clinical trial immediately."

The room erupted in protest from the remaining three, but Charlie had made up her mind. "Hold on here! This is my decision, and it's not like I haven't thought it through!" she raised her voice. When she had regained control of the room, "Here's what is going to happen. I have taken my last treatment as part of the trial. From now on, we are going to concentrate on making every day that I have left on this earth as good as it can be. I want to spend the time I have with the people I love, and the way things have been going, that was not going to be possible. This way, they can keep my pain and nausea to a minimum, for a while longer, anyway, and I damn sure wanna go on that first trail ride with my daughter, like I'm supposed to be able to. The trial is not working, and it is not worth the risk of missing out on the time I can spend with Sammy, and with all of you, too."

* * *

Margie had already chased Clint off to bed after she caught him dozing in his recliner before making one last round in battening down the kitchen. When she came back through the den on her way to bed, "Night, you two."

Ty could not help but notice the look she gave to her granddaughter as she passed by, "Night, Margie," he answered in accompaniment with his couchmate. "So, what was that?" the implication in the form of a question, catching on to their secret tactics of communication.

"That? Oh, that was just Grandma telling me not to chicken out."

Already bracing for another plot to unfold, "Chicken out? About what?"

"I want to meet Amy! For real this time, as soon as possible."

There she went again! His mind bounced off the reset button at the thought of bringing the two of them together. "What are you getting at? Do you really think that is a good idea?"

"It will be. I want to get to know her better, aaannnd I want her to know that I'm OK with her training Sammy and spending time with her. I know it should be me training my daughter instead of her, but I can't do it right now and I want Amy to know that she doesn't have to worry about this _thing_ between us."

"Thing? What thing?"

"You know…, _you,_ you idiot!"

' _Awww, shit! This cannot be good!'_ His imagination took off thinking about all the ways this whole plan could go sideways. "Maybe we ought to put that off for just a little while…"

"Grandma said you would fold up like a dime store coffee table whenever I mentioned this! It's not like I have a lot of time to be putting things off. C'mon, grow a pair and help me to get to know her!"

Already aware that he was fighting a losing battle, "You are really gonna make me do this?"

"Yup!"

* * *

The door on Lisa's Porsche SUV closed with a luxurious thump behind her. Amy stood in awe of the place that had always been her home and the feeling of being as much of a stranger, here as much as everywhere else she had been in the past year, crept all around her.

Lisa noticed the new arrival questioning her willingness to accept that she was finally home, carefully closing into Amy with a gentle squeeze around her waist and whispered, "It's still the same old place, Sweetheart. It's good to have you home."

A timid smile was all she could offer in return, believing the only thing she had to bring back to her roots was an empty shell, too heavy to cast off at the first impression of planting her French-made boots on seven generations of her family's Alberta soil for the first time since 'the blowout'.

That's what she called it, the day all of her self-condemned bad decisions came to a head and caused her brain to have a blowout, sending her crashing into the shaky barriers that prevented her from falling into the depths of hell, she supposed.

Lisa saw it, the desertion of will to keep moving forward, but urged her on, "C'mon, there is a crowd in there thrilled that you are home and waiting to greet you!"

Jack joined them at the gate carrying the new suitcases they had gotten their granddaughter while she was still in the hospital in Barcelona. They were filled with articles Lisa had bought for her in Paris on a pair of shopping sprees after the still healing patient had regained her ability to walk again. Lisa believed the distraction would be a good exercise and give them the opportunity to get to know each other on a more personal level. It also gave her the break she needed to affirm to her despairing step granddaughter that she was safe, appreciated, and loved.

As they took their first steps into the yard a mob of greeters burst through the door. Katie lead the way, clearing the steps off the porch with Georgie and Lou close behind, Tim, Caleb and Scott trailing a bit further back, and swarmed around her waiting for their turn at a welcoming hug.

"Aunt Amy! You're here! You get to teach me how to go on a trail ride, because I'm going to be six in ten more weeks and because mommy thinks I am big enough now! And, I have a new friend, her name is Sammy! She has been coming to take riding lessons with me! Ty is a good teacher! What happened to your hair?"

"Whoa, there squirt! If you don't slow down your tongue is going to fall off!" Tim tried to restrain the runaway enthusiasm of the youngster.

Katie giggled when her granddad picked her up and swung her around to pacify her long enough to at least get everyone inside.

"I have sandwiches ready. I'll bet you are all starving! Let's have some lunch and get you settled," Lou instructed.

* * *

A nice selection of sandwiches made from home grown beef, garden fresh lettuce and tomatoes, and chips sliced from potatoes pulled and washed this morning was a good start. The formal meals were growing old for the out of place country girl stuck in Europe for almost three extra months after her rescue.

Although she had said very little, Lou picked up on what must have been a thousand questions stirring inside of her little sister's mind. After waiting for the others to leave the table and go about their business, Lou said to Amy, "Go ahead and ask it. I know you want to."

"So, Ty is giving Katie riding lessons? What's up with that?"

Considerate of the delicate re-entry, Lou took her time in explaining the ins and outs of the new situation with Ty coming over a couple of times each week to work with Katie and his girlfriend's daughter. "You remember Sammy?"

"Yes, I met her at Ty's clinic when I went to try and get him to agree to talk to me. Looks like Sammy's mom didn't waste any time getting to work on finding a dad for her daughter."

"It's not like that, Amy. You see…"

The flare-up was inevitable, "So what? Too bad, Amy! You screwed up, Amy! You got what you deserved, Amy!" she fumed, "Go ahead, say it!" expecting the _'I told you so'_ to come sooner or later, just not this fast.

Deciding to cut straight to the heart of the matter, Lou calmly looked into the rejected hurt in her sister's eyes, "Charlie has cancer, Amy. She doesn't have much time left, and Ty has been bringing Sammy over here to give her a way to cope with what you and I know all too well as daughters who have lost their mother. Amy, she has just turned six, but Sammy has already lost her grandparents, her father, and now her family has tried to tell her that mother will be gone soon, and we have all pitched in to make this as easy as we can for Ty and her family."

Staggered by the emotional blow, Amy sat speechless as panic built at the perceived abandonment of her own sister's allegiances crumbled all around her. The shocking change in her perception of Lou's motivations humbled her resentment, "Oh, Lou, I'm so sorry! It must be horrible for Sammy to have to go through something like this so young! That's about how old I was when Dad left. It wasn't the same as having him die, but a six year old doesn't know the difference, only that their parent is never coming back." Amy pondered in the memory for a few seconds, and then, "It sounds just like Ty, to take it upon himself to try and fix it all somehow. How's he handling everything?"

"He has done an amazing job with Sammy, and Katie too, as a matter of fact. He set in working with both of them a few weeks ago, _at the same time_ ," she emphasized, "and has made them into pretty darn good little riders. You wouldn't believe the way he has them tacking up their ponies all by themselves. They are trotting already, and they are able to get their horses in the barn, put up their stuff, brush them, and make sure they are watered and fed when they are finished riding. It's so awesome to watch the three of them together!"

"Ty the trainer. Who knew?" Amy's eyes shined at the flashback of the greenhorn city-boy teenager she met almost ten years earlier who couldn't have told you the difference of one end of a horse from the other if his life depended on it, then lost her mood again at the reminder of how things should have been between them. Ty would have been her husband by now, if things had gone according to plan. They would have been thinking about kids of their own. Now she knew he could barely even stand the sight of her, or even the mention of her name if their last meeting was any indication of his attitude toward her. "How is he, Lou? Is he happy?"

"I think he could have been, someday, but now that Charlie's illness has changed everything about all of their lives, I think it's more about survival for him and his need to try and protect Charlie and her family from all the hurting that he can. You know how he is, fighting anything that threatens to hurt the people he cares about."

"Do you think he is in love with her?"

"Who? Charlie?"

"Yes. Do you think he really loves her?"

Lou chose her words carefully, wanting to be honest and fair in her representation, yet as gentle as possible to her dejected sister, "I don't believe it was the crazy, mad, can't think about anything else kind of love, not yet. They seemed to get along especially well, but she was always pushing him, faster than he wanted to go sometimes, I think, but watching him with Sammy is what is so special. That kid had him from the first time I ever saw them together at the restaurant. It was like they had known each other forever."

"I always knew he would be good with kids," Amy mused. "He has so much love inside of him. It just needs someplace to land, someplace steady, with someone who knows how to love him back the way he deserves to be loved."

Lou saw her sister's flighty spirit disappearing again, "I doubt he was over the two of you enough to let himself get into that position again so soon. But he obviously cares for her. He has gotten very close with her grandparents and Sammy has him wrapped around her little finger. You are going to just want to melt when you see Ty with Sammy. They are so awesome together."

"I don't want to see him yet, or, actually, I don't want him to see me like this," she said, gesturing to her head scarf. It's not like he would willingly ever even look at me again, anyway."

"Amy, he will not think anything about your hair! He knows some of what you have been through, so he expects it. Why do you think he would make a big deal out of something like that?"

"Look at me! I don't even look like the person he used to know!"

Lou tried to diffuse the self-degrading attitude before it went any farther, "It will be fine, I promise! You are still just as beautiful as you ever were, just with less hair! And just so you know, he asked me yesterday if you were OK. He doesn't hate you Amy, far from it. That being said, you will have to be ready to accept that he is with someone else. Things are going to be awkward for a bit, but if you work at it, I think he would be open to at least trying to be friends again, someday."

Amy held her breath, not wanting to break down in front of her big sister, and when she thought she had the strength, "I would rather have him as a friend as not to have him in my life at all, so I guess I'm just gonna have to cowboy up!"

 _To be continued_


	33. Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Daylight would be breaking soon in Alberta. It would be coming up on high noon in Barcelona right now and Amy's body still felt like it should be lunch time instead of in the dead of night. The restless trekker had given up on trying to sleep in her old room and decided to take a walk outside in the starlit night to work off some of the constant tension that never let her get the kind of rest she needed. She had ended up in the barn, still trying to get Spartan to come from the back of his stall and forgive her for leaving him alone for so long, not surprised that her appearance would have an effect on his not accepting that it was really her.

Figuring her horse needed some more time to come around, she eventually gave up on coaxing her old friend to make amends and climbed the wooden steps to the upstairs loft. It was eerily void of any sign of life, the yard lights reflection hinting at its interior features well enough to show her the way to the center of the room where she stopped and slowly turned around, soaking up the feel of the place that once gave her so much love and happiness. Making her way to the far end of the dusty room, she unfastened the latch and swung open the large door that overlooked the fishing pond behind the loft's sleeping accommodations. Calling it an apartment was a stretch since there was no heat, bathroom, or running water, only an old iron bed that had once belonged to her Great Grandmother Bartlett and, for almost five years, off and on, used by the boy with which she shared her first serious love.

Lost in the rush of memories as they inundated the stillness surrounding her, Amy leaned a shoulder against the door's opening and shuddered at the early morning chill when a puff of a breeze blew in from the mountains off to the west. She drew in the crispness of it and exhaled a small cloud of mist from her nostrils, just enough dew to react to the warmth her breath had lent it, and the odd reaction of bare skin normally protected by long golden locks which had grown in abundance since she was a small child gave its own heightened sensation of rising goose bumps.

There was just enough light from the waning moon to see the old fishing boat turned upside down, still on the bank beside the water where she last remembered it, and thought about all the conversations and life changing decisions she had made while sitting on its time worn hull. Many arguments and some outright fights had been settled there, and she had once confessed to her sister while they sat on the old reflecting place beside the pond that she had finally decided Ty was the man she knew she wanted to marry and spend the rest of her life with, and if he asked her to marry him again, she would say yes.

Emptiness was surprisingly heavy. As the memories kept pouring into cracks left in the pieces of a future she once believed in, the pain of returning pictures once disremembered by a bruised mind began weighing on her chest, her heart straining for every beat as if she were pulling more of a load than she was physically fit to handle.

Standing alone in the dawn of her second day home, Amy pondered the new obstacle she had to overcome. After spending the entire first day back at home cat napping and walking down to the dude ranch and back trying to get reacclimated to her old life, she had hoped to wipe away the jet lag caused by putting eight hours on hold when you travel backwards around the globe from Europe and reset the biological clock back to Alberta time.

Lou had begged all the previous day between those sporadic naps for her to take over for Ty in coaching Katie and Sammy for their upcoming first trail ride. She was at first intimidated into saying no from some unexplainable fear of failure, but her sister's persistence finally appealed to her nature of wanting to get back to riding and share in that special time of her niece's young life. The only problem was the inevitable first meeting with her ex-fiancée and the awkwardness it was sure to bring when he brought Sammy to the ranch, or picked her up at the end of the day.

Amy couldn't bear to face him, at least not like this. He would surely take satisfaction in seeing her so broken, not that she didn't deserve it, she supposed, and she did not want the reboot of her life in full view of what would be her most observant critic, looking for every missed step to throw her failure back in her face.

Two more hours had passed. Amy had fallen asleep in the old bed, exhaustion finally getting the better of her discontent, and as the sun filtered through the small windows in the old faded barn she was awakened by a strange warmth against the sensitive skin on the back of her head left uncovered by Ty's old goose down pillow.

Stretching awake and feeling a bit better after the slightly longer nap, the halfway revived woman swung her legs over the side of the bed and noticed the old dresser against the wall. Standing in front of the mirror, Amy stared at the grey figure looking back at her, a shadow of the person she used to be, in her opinion. As she stood and rotated slowly, surveying her shape up and down, wearing the pair of jeans she used to call her favorites, it was obvious how much weight she had lost. _'I look like that skinny twelve year old I used to be!'_ she thought.

Curling the tips of her fingers underneath the plaid western shirt, she drew the bottom higher and sulked at the protruding ribs thinking how pathetic she must look to anyone who knew her. Eating seemed more of a necessary chore than a pleasure these days. In fact, almost nothing she did seemed like making the effort worthwhile anymore. She realized she had to do something, anything to get out of this rut she had been buried in for so long that she could not even remember what it was like to be content with her life. It seemed that since the day she set foot on that damned helicopter bound for Europe that every cheer of accomplishment had been trumped tenfold by a thunderous failure.

Just as her stomach rumbled, reminding her that breakfast was probably ready by now, the crunching of gravel under the wheels of a vehicle at the top of the hill broke the silence of the loft. When the noise grew louder, she tensed at the familiar sound it made and ran to the window to see if her worst fears were correct. "Shit!"

She had asked Lou to make sure that she was not anywhere around when Ty came to bring Sammy by the ranch this morning, but as the old blue GMC stopped in its usual parking spot in front of the barn she realized she was trapped in the loft and pulled her face far enough away from the window to ensure that she would not be seen by the visitors below.

Straining around the window frame, Amy watched as Ty went to the passenger door and popped it open, the little girl leaping off the step inside the cab and bouncing to the grass in a dead run toward the house. It was a surreal moment, seeing a distant dream she used to envision brought to life. Many nights she had fallen asleep in her room daydreaming about watching Ty with their own little boy or girl, just like that.

When the girl had made it to the front porch the door banged open and Katie held it for her friend, and when they disappeared into the house her sister caught it at half swing before it closed and met Ty at the steps. They shared a brief conversation and stepped inside for a few moments, leaving the rattled cowgirl time to come up with a plan to evade the awkward meeting.

Amy cracked the heavy wooden door of the loft and peeked down the stairs listening for any sign of life other than the horses in their stalls, and then decided it was safe to creep down the steps and make a break for the back door of the barn.

She had no more than made it to the last step when she heard someone push the front door open and she darted back up the steps into the safety of the loft.

"Amy?" a familiar voice shattered the silence. "It's Ty. I need to talk to you while the girls are eating breakfast." After no reply, he repeated, "Amy, c'mon, come out here and talk to me, _please_."

Deciding that he was not going to leave without some kind of reply, "Just go, Ty! I don't want to see you!"

"We are going to have to get this over with sooner or later. Might as well be now," he reasoned.

"No, not now!"

Knowing were the voice was hidden, Ty put down an armload of things he brought from the house and directed his request up to his old loft, "Come down here and talk to me, Amy. We gotta do this."

"No!"

"Amy, cut it out! We aren't two stupid kids anymore, get down here and talk to me! It's for the best we get this over with now."

"No! Go away!"

"I'm not leaving! You can either come down now or I will park myself right here and wait you out," he threatened, trying to present himself as calmer than he was.

"Why are you doing this to me? Why are you being so mean?"

"Since when does Amy Fleming hide from anything? It's just me."

"That's the point! _It is you_!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't want you to see me like this!"

"Like what? What is there that I have not seen before? You need some clothes, or something?" wondering what could be the big deal. Maybe she had come out here in the middle of the night when no one was around and felt exposed because of not being dressed.

"I'm not the same as you remember, Ty. You wouldn't even recognize me. I would be like a stranger to you!" her voice cracking at trying to hide her high level of distress and the idea of her ex-fiancée seeing her in her present state.

"I can't believe it! I never thought I would see the day that Amy Fleming had turned chicken!"

"You don't understand!" he screamed.

"I understand that you are a feathered up, peckin' in the dirt, cluckin' chicken!" he hollered back in a dare.

The wooden door of the loft rattled the rafters in the old barn as it slammed shut, followed by stomping from heavy footfalls upon each tread of the wooden steps, a sound he had heard more than once when Amy had thrown a fit over something stupid he had said or done when they were still kids.

"Here!" she screamed, taking a defensive stance in the center of the aisle in front of him. "Are you satisfied? I told you I am not the person you knew, so go ahead and have your laugh!"

Ty was shocked at her appearance but wanted above everything else not to show his first impression of the recovering patient, so frail and hurt as she bent forward exposing her self-doubt. Taking a half step back and putting his hands on his hips in an evaluating pose, "Well, best I can tell, the only thing I can see wrong with you is that you need to get rid of those sissy boots and start eating more of Lou's homemade cooking," avoiding mentioning the obvious scarf that hid the lockless scalp left as a result of having her head shaved and cut open during the surgery.

She had practiced at least one hundred scenarios of their first meeting inside her head, but this one was not even close. Amy was dumbfounded at how easily he had disarmed her, that silly grin slowly creeping across his face knowing he had stopped her fit of rage in its tracks, something he had gotten very good at in the later years of their romance.

"You think my boots look sissy?" she asked.

"Yup!" and from out of nowhere began to laugh against his best effort, fearful that she would take it the wrong way.

Amy might have been angry, probably a sure thing with anyone else, but seeing Ty laugh cracked right through the shell she had been using to protect herself, and as hard as she tried not to, returned the belly laugh until she wiped away the first happy tears she could remember in ages.

Taking a brief moment to look at her straight on, Ty bent over to the pile things he had carried from the house and said, "Here, try these," and held up her work boots he had found under the bench just inside the front door of the house. "Aaannnd, put this on, if you really want to be a cowgirl. No wonder Spartan doesn't know who you are," and held up one of her favorite cowboy hats.

"I haven't worn a hat like that since I left. I'm afraid it would hurt to wear it, you know, with no hair and all," she admitted, looking down as if she had something to be ashamed of.

"That's why I brought this," and reached into his back pocket and handed her his old stocking hat that was left hanging on one of the hangers in the house. "This might not look like classic cowgirl attire but it will keep your hat from irritating that hard head of yours."

The feeling she had at that moment was amazing. Happiness was such a foreign concept these days that when it hit her, it was like a new experience that she knew she wanted more of. "Thank you….That was, sweet of you to think of that," she humbly conceded her anger.

Ty watched her sit on the bottom step of the stairs and exchange the low heeled and very stylish French boots for the old worn in ones she had bought years ago at Maggie's in Hudson well before Lou had bought the store to bring the tradition into their family, and when she stood and rocked back and forth a couple of times to settle into them he reached out and adjusted the stocking cap on her bare head and carefully sat the hat on top of it. "There, that ought to do it! Why don't you grab a treat out of the bin over there and see if Spartan is feeling more sociable today."

Still in a daze at having her outlook on the re-establishment of conversation with Ty turned around so fast, Amy reached into the treat bin and picked out the one she knew her horse would like. Having resigned to herself that she had taken too many big chances lately, the downcast trainer looked nervously up to the even tempered man beside her and he nodded toward the horse standing in his usual place at the rear of his stall. Taking the few steps left between her and the stable's gate, she timidly called to him, "Hey, boy, I got sumpthin for ya!" and held her hand out in front of her face and waved it temptingly at her old friend. Two quick snorts followed by his old curious nicker had him moving toward her. Amy's hand shook from energy threatening to burst right through her skin, and when he nudged her hand to open it up, Spartan took the treat and hung his head over the gate to brush his muzzle against the emotionally overwhelmed cowgirl's chest. Amy put her arms around the black gelding and sobbed with her face buried against his neck, "Looks like we might go on that ride after all!"

 _To be continued_


	34. Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

Ty slipped unceremoniously through the front door of the barn. He decided to leave Amy alone with Spartan to enjoy their small step forward because he knew how relieved she would be that the most special horse in her life had accepted her back as a friend and he did not want to spoil the moment for her and the horse who must have felt like she had abandoned him. It looked like she needed any victory she could get and he chose to get in the truck and head on to his shift at the clinic.

Still processing what he had just seen of the woman he had once thought of as the love of his life and the serious state of her condition, he passed under the Heartland sign over the gate at the top of the hill and slowed his truck long enough to let his eyes wonder around the valley he now thought of as his home. He could see everything that shaped him into the person he had become. Pastures flourishing with the last crop of hay for the summer blanketed the foothills leading up to the Rockies, a tradition carried on for seven generations of raising cattle and horses that he had become a part of. To the right was the house that anchored the Bartlett-Fleming clan as the diverse mix of family that they were, dysfunctional at times but loving and caring to the ones that lived there, even to an outsider like him. Off to the left was the faded old barn that once harbored all of his hopes and dreams, helping to launch him into adulthood and seeing all of his dreams realized until they were denied by the long arm of fate that seemed to have it in for him by knocking him down to nothing every time it felt like he had life going his way.

His intention had been to keep the interaction with his ex as short and businesslike as possible, not knowing what to expect from her anymore, only wanting to hand off of the training schedule he had been keeping with his two riding pupils and to evaluate for himself, and for his unwavering girlfriend, that Amy was up to the task after all they heard she had been through during the past year.

As he took stock of his own well being, Ty had spent plenty of time imagining what he would do or say when it became absolutely necessary to face the one thing that almost destroyed him, but to see the steady, accomplished woman he had loved so deeply turned into a fragile mess, so chillingly damaged and desperate to hold on to what was left of her self-worth had physically shaken him. _'What the hell did he do to her?'_

Even after their relationship had been marred by anger and mistrust following the breakup he still could not bear to see the girl that had first accepted him for who he was, had helped him find his way in a second chance at life, hurting like she clearly was. He had acted on what he had to do to get this project underway, as promised, by reaching deep enough for forgiveness in himself to give the idea a chance and ended up helping the woman who broke his heart to begin healing her own brokenness.

The jilted ex-fiancé was well aware that he had barely managed to get out of sight with his weathered dignity intact after he saw Amy break down beside Spartan. Their meeting readjusted his assumptions about how deeply the effects of their disillusioned love had changed them both. She broke his heart all over again, and whether out of instinct, habit, or just plain stupidity, Ty knew he had to try to do whatever he could to help her make it all better, for her own sake and for the family that he loved who shared in her struggle to rebuild who she was to become.

He was already thinking ahead to this afternoon when he would have to return and pick Sammy up to take her back to 8S ranch. Ty figured there would be a stream of questions coming at him and the little rider about the day's lesson and needed for his answers to be good ones.

Just as he stepped on the clutch and put the old GMC in gear to head out, his phone vibrated in his pocket. "That didn't take long!" he shook his head and smiled.

"Did you ask her? What did she say? When do I get to go meet her? Is Sammy alright? Did she seem OK with having Amy there instead of you?"

"Hey, Charlie! Good morning to you, too!" he scoffed. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Fine! Well, did you?"

Ty went ahead and let out the clutch to get the old truck rolling. This might take a while. "Ask her?"

"Yes, dammit, Ty! Did you ask her?"

"Well, no, not yet. I was going to, but…."

"You didn't ask her? You are such a _chicken_!"

' _Funny she should say that,'_ he thought, given it was the exact strategy he used on Amy only a few minutes ago, "Look, Charlie, she has been having a harder time of it lately than I thought. Remember, this is the first time I have seen her in…, a long time, and I just needed to get through this morning the best I could first before I get into trying to have a real conversation. Can you try to put yourself in my place and give me a break, for once?" he asked, the first time since she had been sick that he could recall showing her the clear borderline of his patience.

A long silence suggested the full tilt mother was teetering between a lecture about his shriveled sack, or reaching deep enough for a dose of empathy toward his predicament, "I'm sorry, Doc. It's just that, if I wait much longer, I'm not sure I can go through with it. This is harder than I thought it would be, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. I will do it tonight when I pick Sammy up, I promise…, that is if they all get along well enough through today that she will agree to keep working with the girls."

The interim riding coach wished on one hand that he could stay and watch the goings on in the arena with his replacement and the apprentice riders he had left in her care after seeing the condition Amy was in this morning, but on the other hand he felt safe in knowing Lou would be closely monitoring the coaching session because of her own vested interest in Katie and making sure her daughter and Sammy were in no unnecessary danger.

* * *

Amy noticed the old blue truck mysteriously stop for a minute at the Heartland gate, then watched it fade out of sight as it crested the hill above the ranch. Ty had disappeared before she could even say 'thank you' for helping her break the reprieve with Spartan who, just like her, seemed to have a new bounce in his step.

The dust had not yet settled on the driveway when both of her new students ran out of the house, finished with breakfast and filled to the top with the energy, squealing at each other as they raced on foot across the yard toward the barn.

"This is gonna be a looong day," she muttered to herself, concerned if this was any indication of how the girls were going to behave during her lesson.

The new riding coach watched curiously as their purpose changed the second they neared the barn. With no prompt whatsoever they slowed to a decent walk and each girl went straight to their corner of the tack room. Amy scrutinized the tiny pair as they magically transformed from typical little girls into disciplined young riders and fetched their own gear to sit it on a low stack of bales beside each of their horses' stalls since they were too short to toss the saddles and blankets across the top of the gate like the bigger riders did.

The coach had planned on starting from the most basic of basics in getting the horses ready to ride. Instead, Amy stood in the main door of the barn with her arms folded across her chest and took in the sight of two determined young girls concentrating on settling their ponies, sorting all the tack, and one piece at a time, getting it put in place. _'If Ty got them this far, why the hell do they need me? This is amazing!'_

In only a few minutes time the trio marched in formation out of the barn. Without any prodding from their teacher, they each led their ponies in tow and stood patiently holding the reigns while they waited for their new coach to make a slow round to inspect their work so far. It was going to be an adjustment from all the self-imposed solitude she preferred during her stay in Barcelona and Paris, but maybe this was not going to be so bad after all, "OK ladies, let's have a look at those saddles." Tugging at all the ties and buckles, checking the positioning of both the blankets and saddles, "Bits in straight, not too tight or tangled up, nice job, girls! Did Ty teach you how to tack up your ponies like this?"

"Yeeesss," they proudly answered together.

Sammy added, "He's a real good coach!"

The trainer smiled at the apparent discipline of her new pupils. They were very respectful of their responsibilities in safely handling their horses and taking their lesson seriously, without the childish interruptions or silliness she expected from the two miniature riders, and of course thought how adorable is was that Ty had won them over as well.

"Cinches tight?"

"Yeeesss," again in harmonious unison.

"Let's walk them for a bit before we mount up. Do you know why we want to do that?" she quizzed the youngsters.

"So if they burp it won't loosen the cinch and make us fall off later!" Katie offered.

Amy laughed, "Do horses burp?"

"They sure do! Pogie burped and the cinch came loose and I would a busted my butt when I fell over to the side…,"

Sammy interrupted to finish the story, "Yeah, if Ty wouldn'ta caught her, she'd have hit the dirt for sure!"

"OK, OK, I get it!" she threw up her hands and had to stop and laugh again, picturing the whole incident in her mind, and all three of them giggled together at the rancher's humor until Amy decided she should ask, "So, where did you learn about busted…., uh, backsides?" thinking maybe she had better put an end to such talk or else have to face her sister, or worse yet, Charlie for teaching their daughters off color cowboy remarks.

"Ty told us!" Katie tattled.

Amused by the naughty innocence, "Did he, now?"

"But he sorta got into trouble…," Sammy finish for her riding buddy. "And we are not supposed to not say the word _butts_ anymore, right Katie?" and they all giggled again.

"And, when I was little," Sammy added, "Mom used to say she has going to bust my butt when I didn't do what she told me to!" and the trio of cowgirls again laughed together.

"Well, did you get your…, backside busted?" curious as to Charlie's parenting tactics.

"No, 'cause she is sick and I didn't mean to make her mad. She gave me a hug and asked me not to do it again and I said I wouldn't."

It hit Amy like an arrow through the heart, the young rider's downturned head telling her awareness of her mother's condition, and the coach knew she had to get the lesson going quickly to keep it moving in a positive direction. "OK, then, ladies, its backsides from now on, right?" she attempted to be the example of coach her sister and Charlie would be sure to expect. "Check those cinches one more time unless you want to try riding upside down, and then check the straps on your helmets. Trust me when I say you don't want to get a big bump on your heads if you bus…, hit the dirt!" she corrected her reference.

Amy wanted to watch the young equestriennes at first to evaluate exactly how far their previous trainer had gotten in teaching them the necessary riding skills before sending them out on the trail. She unlatched the gate and held it open for Katie and Sammy to enter the soft rectangle of dirt and walked around the middle for half an hour while she observed their steady slow pace, pointing out the occasional suggestion for posture or technique to help them be better riders. Finally, "Who wants to kick it up a little?" she asked.

"Me!" in the usual harmonious fashion, and they each entered into a canter.

The youthful enthusiasm of her pupils was so infectious that Amy had caught the bug. The girls had kept her smiling most of the day without so much as a thought of the burdens she had been carrying. This was turning into so much better of an experience than she had anticipated, she hadn't bothered to look at the time.

* * *

Lisa and Jack arrived back at the ranch house after their daily coffee run and a few errands done in town. When they came through the kitchen door they saw Lou bent across the sink with her nose close to the window. Lisa was quick to ask, "Watching the show, huh? So, how is it going? Is Amy holding up OK? Are the girls behaving for her?"

"It seems to be going well, actually! The girls, all of them, are having a blast together and nobody has hit the dirt yet, so…, quite well, I would say! Look at the three of them. They have been like that all morning," pointing at the three cowgirls, each at a new beginning in their lives, leaving the cares of the world behind while sharing a common bond, the love of spending time with a horse.

"Lou, that's good to hear!" Jack smiled and placed a rugged hand on his granddaughter's shoulder and pulled Lisa into a hug with the other.

"I can tell that Amy is getting tired, though," Lou admitted. "I have been watching them for a while now and she is slowing down a bit. I had probably better get out there and bring them in before she pushes herself too far."

"That would be a good idea," Jack agreed.

Ever the nonstop overseer of trying to spoil her godchild and now, step granddaughter, Lisa said, "Tell the girls we have a treat for them when they get in the house. I found the cutest little pink pony cookies in town and if they don't get in here pretty soon there won't be any left because I keep catching Jack with his hand in the box!" swatting his hand for the umpteenth time since they had left the bakery with the box filled to the top.

* * *

Lou leaned against the rails of the arena just like all the other countless times over the years watching Amy practice for jumping competitions or to work with client's horses, or Georgie learning to do stunts for her trick riding shows, but it was especially heartwarming to watch the joy on those small faces as they progressed in learning their saddle skills. Perhaps best face of all, though, was the confidence fixed across the face of her embattled sister as she found her first foothold in returning to her roots, the smile bearing witness to the feeling of finally being home. "Whaddya say you girls call it a day? It looks like you deserve a break. Good job, girls!" she shouted to the young riders, "And good job to you too, Sis!" she said, reaching out to hug the younger Fleming as she came to the fence. "So, was it like you thought it would be with those two?" nodding in the direction of the riders trying to get one more lap around the course before Amy swung the gate open and directed them toward the barn.

"I gotta say, I was dreading having to do this, but being around them all day has reminded me of what life is about." Amy confessed.

"Oh? How so?"

Amy pursed her lips as she thought about an answer, "Watching them being so excited when they get something I showed them. I mean, when they get something that they didn't know how to do this morning, and then realize that they have learned something new and the way I can see the pride in their faces is just so awesome! They were so focused, so disciplined…, Ty really did an amazing job with them. I have to admit, I cannot believe he was able to figure out how to whip them into shape so fast. And it wasn't even on a motorcycle!"

"Those girls are crazy about Ty," Lou mused. "I think he could get them to do just about anything for him. It's like he is the greatest thing since Disney created 'Frozen'!"

* * *

After the stalls were cleaned, ponies brushed, put in their stalls, and tack cleaned and put away, the formal duties of being a rider gave way to being little girls again. While they finished their nightly chores endless chatter filled the barn once more like she had expected from the beginning, but Amy didn't mind. Happiness from innocent laughter of children has a way of sloshing over onto everyone within its range and the less reclusive riding coach had soaked up her fair share during the day.

As she sat resting at her mother's old desk in the barn's office Amy could feel the knot that had kept her stomach drawn tight begin to loosen. It even seemed to be easier to breathe. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes to rest for a minute. _'Maybe Lou was right when she stopped us for the day,'_ she admitted, having been so caught up in the session that she had not realized how physically drained she was.

A tap of a knuckle on the door startled her awake, "Hey…, sorry to wake you. Looked like you were having a nice nap," Ty said as he took a small step inside the door.

Amy jerked upright, "Oh, I guess I must have dosed off for a second! Where are the girls?" thinking she must have made an appalling impression of slacking on the job while supposedly taking care of the kids.

"Don't worry about the brats. They are already inside getting Sammy's stuff gathered up so we can get her home."

Her shoulders drooped in relief, "Sorry, I guess they tuckered me out more than I thought."

"It's OK. They will do that to anyone. Ask me how I know!" he let out an understanding chuckle. "Lou tells me that you had a really good session today. She said you all got along great and the girls are raring to go again on Thursday."

"Maybe I will be rested up by then," she slighted her stamina. "I didn't realize how far downhill my strength has gone. My balance isn't so great either. They had me dizzy more than once trying to keep up with them."

"Maybe we should give you a break before we try this again," he reasoned. "We don't want to make it uncomfortable for you."

"No! Absolutely not! I would miss doing the lesson more than they would, believe me!" Amy reassured him.

"OK, if you think…,"

" _I know!_ I will be fine!"

"Good! Look, Amy, there is something I have to talk to you about. I know this is going to come off as awkward, but Charlie has asked that I bring her out here Thursday to meet you."

Amy looked like a deer in headlights, lips trying to say words that were still clogged in her brain while she stared blank and pleading for some kind of help. "Whh-why would she want to do that?" she asked weakly. "Does she not trust me with Sammy, like I won't be able to take care of her, or something?"

"Before you get too worried, here's the deal." Ty sat on the edge of a chair facing her across the desk and clasped his hands before he continued, "As you probably know, Charlie is very sick. She was taking part in a clinical trial, the doctors thought it might help her to have a little more quality time with Sammy and…. Long story short, it didn't go like we hoped it would." His head bowed as he lost his poker face and began to reveal the level of stress he had been trying to hide. "After her treatment last week she decided that she had had enough. Can't say as I blame her because it has been brutal for her sometimes. They just never could keep her from being worse off than before she took those damn treatments, so…."

"I am so sorry, Ty. I can only imagine what she must be going through, all of you."

"Yeah, well, it has been…, rough," having no better word to explain Charlie's battles with her health. "Point is, she knows she is running out of time. She had the idea…, we have been making videos of her and Sammy together, you know, like a video journal for Sammy after she is gone so she will at least know something about her when she gets older and maybe remember how much her mother loved her while she was here."

Amy sniffled as she tried to hold back the tears, "I know just how she feels, about the videos, I mean. The only videos I have of mom are from a few old 8mm home movies that others have sent to me over the years, mostly from her rodeo days and colt starting competitions." Her face flushed when she realized, "Oh, I forgot, you have seen them, I guess, sorry. But, anyway, I have a couple of clips with her and Dad together at rodeos when he was the man to beat. Everybody was still keeping up with his career and I was just a baby back then. There is nothing in this world that I would trade for them. Besides Spartan and these journals, they are all I have left of her now, now that we aren't together anymore."

When Ty straightened up and headed for the door in wondering where this conversation was headed, she added, "Don't worry, I just mean that one of the last things Mom did while she was alive was to bring you here. Who knew all the things that would set in motion, eh?" After giving the noticeably wary man leaning on the door a few seconds to calm back down, "But I ruined that, didn't I?"

"That's water under the bridge, Amy," speaking calmer than she might have expected. "No need to concern ourselves with all of that now," he said, not yet ready to scrape the scab off of his gaping wound.

"OK, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just that, I don't want things to be so strained between us. I know how much I hurt you, Ty. Please work with me. I need very much to get back on decent speaking terms with you so someday I can find a way to show you how sorry I really am, maybe do something to make it up to you, at least a little bit. It is important to me that we can do that. I hope it is for you, too."

"I don't know, Amy. It's like a big hole got blown in me and it's still there. I tried to find something, someone to fill it, but now that isn't going to work out either, so, I can't make any promises. It's all about making it one day at a time because that's about all I can handle right now. Besides, we _are_ talking, and that is more than I thought I could do a couple of days ago, so," he faded.

"You're right. We _are_ talking. And I thank you for that." Amy sensed an opportunity to prove her words, "So, what is it that Charlie wants to come here to do?"

"Are you willing to let her come and see if she is strong enough to go along on the first trail ride with Sammy? You have no idea how big of a deal that would be for both of them. This will be one of the last big things they will get to do together, if she can do it at all. It is also the main reason Charlie dropped out of the trial, so she could build herself up enough to take her last trail ride, and Sammy's first one, together."

"Tell Charlie to come as soon as she feels ready. I promise I will do everything possible to make it work for her. I think with the way the girls are handling their ponies and staying in their saddles that there will be no problem on their part. By the way, I wanted to tell you how impressed I was to watch them come into the barn and work with their ponies. You did an amazing job with them, Ty. And they didn't bust their butts once today!" daring a slight grin.

"Yeah, about that…"

* * *

The stars were just beginning to show themselves in the late evening hour because the sun did not go behind the mountains until after ten o'clock this time of year in Alberta. Amy sat on the steps of the front porch looking up at the emerging constellations reminiscing about the wonderful experience the day had turned out to be. She was left with warm thoughts of Ty instantly turning into the loving, diligent dad she knew he would be someday after Georgie, Katie, and Sammy came to see what was taking so long in the barn, expecting that it was past time for Ty and Sammy to leave for home, and the way all the tension from a surprisingly civil conversation between them had seemed to vanish when Ty squatted down and tossed the giggle box of a precious little girl over his shoulder and carried her out to his old blue truck making the best of his situation and pretending all was as right as rain. A curl tugged at the edges of her lips visualizing the way Sammy stretched her neck enough to look up at her from her precarious position, "Bye, Amy! I had a lot of fun today! See ya Thursday, OK?"

"Not if I see you first!" Amy teased, smiling as she watched Ty open the door and toss his squealing captive into the seat like a sack of potatoes. Sammy immediately popped back up and fastened her seat belt, then waved enthusiastically at everyone outside the truck as it backed away. It was amazing thing, to watch them together, a busy young man taking someone else's scared, hurting child and working so hard to try and make her world a much better place than it would be if he were not there for her.

Amy sat in the quiet evening exhausted because her global clock still insisted on and telling her it was not long past her bedtime. She was torn between accepting the day as a rewarding success or a tormenting reminder of a lesson she had learned as a little girl when her mother first took her to jumping competitions, that the hardest defeats were the ones you gave away after having been in a position to win and making your own mistakes to cost you the victory.

This was much worse than that. She had given away the love of a lifetime, and no defeat had ever stung so badly.

 _To be continued_


	35. Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Amy had been up since before the crack of dawn busying herself with anything she could think of to help prepare her for Charlie's visit to the ranch. The idea of spending most of a day with the woman who had captured all of her ex-fiancé's attention seemed bizarre at the very least, and potentially disastrous if anything were to go wrong. But the remorseful cowgirl believed this could be the way she could best prove to Ty that she wanted to tear down the walls that had been built between them because of both of their poor choices, and the plight of a woman wanting to share such a special day with her daughter under these circumstances tugged heavily upon her compassionate nature.

Re-cleaning and straightening the tack, not that it needed the attention, and completing all of the morning chores before it was time to eat breakfast had kept her mind occupied, _'Georgie and Katie are going to love this!'_ she thought, giving her sister's daughters the morning off from their usual duties in the barn.

A vibration from her pocket got her attention and she could have guessed who would be wanting to talk at this hour, "I'll be right there, Lou. Tell Georgie and Katie the chores are already finished so they won't have to eat breakfast in one bite and hurry to the barn like they usually do." She chuckled at the "Awesome!" coming from the background when the news was relayed and stuck the phone back in her pocket.

Spartan hung his head over the gate in his stall as his owner walked past so she stopped at the treat bin and pulled out one of his favorites. The clever horse stuck his nose in her palm as she presented the offering and stroked across his mane as he munched it, "I'm gonna need your help to get through this, buddy. What the hell have I gotten myself into?"

It was rare for the entire family to sit and have breakfast all together at the same table and soon everyone started to absorb enough coffee, ham, eggs, and fresh biscuits with sawmill gravy to start thinking about what to expect for the day.

Lou asked, "Georgie, how is that report on wild horses in the mountains coming along?"

"I have it finished already. That is one school project that didn't suck!"

"Hey! Language!" Lou scolded. "I wish you would take interest in all of your projects like this one."

"Well, if all the projects didn't suck, I would!"

Lisa attempted to frown and kicked her husband's ankle under the table as Jack tried to smother his amusement at his adopted great granddaughter's attitude. "Georgie, I would expect by now that you know not to sass your mom like that anymore, especially at the table," giving his best great grandfatherly disappointed look.

The rebellious teenager slumped in her chair, embarrassed at having Jack feel the need to intercede. "Sorry."

"Well, Georgie, if you work at studying the basics now and get them down like I am sure you will, you can study the things that interest you when you get to university."

"Why do I need to go to university when all I want to do is work with horses? Besides, I am learning everything I need to know right now from Sandra. By then I will be a professional trick rider. I'll be famous by the time my friends go off to college so I won't be needing anything to do with a university."

By the time Lou finished her lecture on the importance of a good education everybody was ready to move on to anything else for around the table conversation. Lisa asked, "Amy, are you ready for the big trail ride today?"

Amy asked her niece, "Honey, why don't you go get your things gathered up for the ride today?"

The eager little cowgirl squirmed down from her chair and hopped down the hall to her room.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Amy answered, twirling her fork through her scrambled eggs. "I mean, what's to worry about? My ex-fiancé is bringing his terminally ill girlfriend out here to go on what may very well be her last trail ride and watch me try to keep her daughter from getting in trouble on her very first time out. What would possibly go wrong?" she smirked. "No pressure there!"

"Amy, you will do just fine. You'll see!" Jack backed up the young woman he knew needed her own mental and physical renovation.

Lisa put a hand on her hesitant step granddaughter's shoulder, "You got this! I believe you are more ready than you realize. Just remember, she is here to share a very special day with Sammy, not to be critical of you. I think she just may surprise you and be very appreciative of what you have offered to do for them."

Amy dropped her fork and put both hands on the table as if to steady herself, "I hope you are right, Lisa, because here they come now!" she gulped. "Katie, are you ready to help Sammy with her first trail ride?"

"Yaaay!" the young student shouted as she shot out of her room with her backpack and helmet.

"Thank you for coming with me and Katie yesterday for her first ride," Lou said. "I just wanted to be able to share that first one with her, like Charlie wants to do with her own daughter. It's the kind of thing you only get one shot at, and I certainly wasn't going to miss mine."

"I know," the nervous trail boss said, "and it should make things a little easier because now Katie is an _old pro_ and I shouldn't have to worry about showing her very much this time out. That will give me more time to take care of Sammy and whatever happens with Charlie today."

Lou bent down to give Katie a quick peck on top of her head while the impatient youngster impatiently waited to go meet her friend and then reached out for the pink hat on the hook by the door and plopped it on her daughter's head," You need to help your Aunt Amy with Sammy and her mom, so be sure to do whatever she asks you to do, OK?"

"I will! I will show Sammy everything I learned yesterday so she can be as good as I am!"

"C'mon Annie Oakley! Let's show 'em what ya got!" the proud aunt put her hand at her niece's back and prompted her toward the door as she laughed, then turned into her sister as she offered a reassuring hug when she passed by. "Thanks, I need all the support I can get."

"Hey guys!" Charlie greeted them enthusiastically. "Hi, Katie! I'm Sammy's mom!" as she bent over to meet her daughter's riding companion and new best friend. "And I want to thank you for doing this, Amy. It means a lot to both of us," she said, the authentic gratitude showing in her eyes when they looked directly into Amy's.

"I am glad to do it, Charlie. The girls have come so far already, with Ty's help. I honestly have to give him most of the credit for teaching them how to…"

The doting mother interrupted, shooting a tongue-in-cheek look at the tongue tied veterinarian next to her, "Keep from busting their, _behinds_? Yeah, ol' Doc here taught 'em all kinds of cowboy stuff, didn't he?" It was the first time visitor's attempt to cut some slack in the tension hanging like an unseen fog around them, and they all shared their first laugh together.

"My bad…" he responded to being double teamed, taking the easiest way out he could find, "OK, then, did you two get everything you need out of the truck?"

"It is right here, Hon," Charley held up the back pack, "Right, Brat?"

"Yup! I made sure Mom didn't forget anything!" she confidently nodded.

"What do you girls say we get those horses tacked up?" the eager mother suggested, and got on her tip toes to peck Ty on the cheek. As she brushed the kiss away with her thumb, Charlie took an extra moment to give him a confident look in hopes of settling his apprehension for leaving her in Amy's care and took off walking toward the barn as if it was any other ordinary day on the ranch.

Anxiety squeezed Ty's chest as he watched his girlfriend take a few steps with the younger pair of riders skipping along behind her in full celebration of their first trail ride together, paused, and turned toward the bright red dually 8S ranch truck to leave when he noticed his former lover studying him.

Amy knew the look in his eyes, "I will take care of them, I promise."

He never said a word, but his eyes spoke volumes when he pursed his lips, watched her for a few seconds longer, and nodded before he went to the truck and backed away. It was the first time since before she left for Europe they had made a connection like that, the kind where they could start and finish a conversation without either of them having to resort to verbal communication.

The shiny new truck make its way around the first turn up the hill toward town and Amy took a bit too long to watch it leaving causing a shout to catch her by surprise.

"Aunt Amy! C'mon! We're burning daylight!"

She turned to see the day's three riding companions standing in the door loaded down with tack, "Anxious to get started, are we?" and chuckled, "Katie, you've been spending time with your grandpa again, haven't you?" recognizing the prodding comment and the source from which she would have gotten it.

The first twenty minutes were used explaining important riding strategies to the girls, flanked on either side by the adults, and some of the things that were different about being in the open out on the trail instead of in a confined arena like they were accustomed to. "I need both of you to pay attention to where you are leading your ponies. It is up to you to steer them away from things that might hurt them, or you, like that gopher hole over there. What do you think would happen if Pogie or Elsa stepped in one like that?"

"It might cause them to break a leg!" Katie answered, causing Sammy to gasp. "It's OK, Sammy. I'll show you how!"

Amy glanced to Sammy's mother and returned her smile, "That's right. It might hurt your ponies and we don't want that to happen, now, do we?"

"NO!" they each chimed in together.

Charlie called to the middle pair of riders, "Why don't you girls get in front of us so Amy and I can watch you, just be careful and remember all the things she has been teaching you all morning, OK?"

"OK!" again in unison.

"Do they do that all the time now?"

"Answer together? Yeah, they are more like twins than friends," Amy laughed. "And you will probably see it before the day is over, but they are finishing each other's sentences, too. Two peas in a pod, these two!"

The pair of miniature cowgirls fell into formation together and Charlie sat quiet as she watched them, and then remembered to turn on her GoPro camera clipped to her cowboy hat. After a few minutes of uneventful riding, the smiling mother leaned toward her trail partner and said, "That is sooo adorable! I can see that they have become really good friends. Sammy needs that more than ever now."

"Aren't they though? And, I know! It blows me away how disciplined they are around the barn and the horses, and how girly they are everywhere else. I love to hear them gabbing their girl talk and giggling and carrying on like they do. It is such a happy sound. It would make anyone feel better to hear it. It sure has made a difference for me!"

Charlie reached up and turned the camera off, "That's good, especially since it sounds like things have been pretty rough for you lately." The comment hit her like a low hanging tree limb that she did not see coming. Amy stammered while Charlie looked at her as if she were actually concerned for her wellbeing. It might have made her angry, the lead in to a story she had not planned on sharing with anyone, especially her replacement with Ty, but the expression in the other woman's face seemed to be sincere and somehow disarmed the first knock of hostility.

"I've been better, I suppose," wishing to leave it at that and move on to something less upsetting to talk about.

"Look, Amy, I did not come here to judge you or give you pretentious concern. You're lookin' at a girl who has crashed and burned in catastrophic fashion herself. Brad Harris, Sammy's father, was mine."

"I remember him!" Amy recalled. "He was the hottest thing going on the circuit for a couple of years."

"Yeah, he sure was. When I was in my second year of university I had this band. We played all the local college town hangouts and I got to feeling pretty good about myself because all the boys were knocking themselves out to ask me out on a date. I started partying a lot and I'd had my fair share of losers. One night after a gig I ended up OD'd and in the hospital. Somebody slipped something in my drink after I had already taken a couple of hits earlier on my own. I was in pretty sad shape for a while after that until one day I was sitting outside in the garden waiting for my folks to come and see me. Being inside during the beautiful weather was killing me worse than the rehab. I met him for the first time that day, Brad that is. He was a tall, good lookin' hunk of a guy, only he was stuck in a wheel chair because of getting his ass stomped by a bronc at the Canadian Finals Rodeo and in rehab himself for the pain killers he had been using to get by long enough to finish the season. Typical rodeo stud, cock sure of himself and full of it, even in the chair. We eventually went out and the next thing you know, I was head over heels in love for the first time in my life. We dated for almost a year, things were getting serious, or so I thought, because one day I got a couple of pictures in a letter showing Brad cozied up with the Sweetheart of the Rodeo somewhere in Ontario.

"Ouch!" Amy grimaced at the hurt that must have caused, thinking about Ty and the package so conveniently delivered to him at such a sensitive time. "Look, Charlie, don't think you owe me any kind of explanation or anything. I made my own mistakes and it's not your fault that I am where I am with Ty. So, don't think you have to do this to make me feel any differently about you. It's my fault and I have no other choice but to own it, or, as Grandpa says, cowboy up, learn my lesson, and move on."

Charlie acknowledged Amy's comment with a nod, glanced ahead to see the younger riders safely up the trail, and then surprisingly continued as if determined to get her story out in the open, "Well, needless to say, shit hit the fan and I hooked up with this good looking guy back in Edmonton. His daddy was stupid rich and his trophy wife momma jerked both of them around by their noses like little kids. The whole thing was all about getting my revenge because that shrivel nutted goober was a pathetic waste of a hot body with more money to spend than cents," exaggerating her humorous pun with an expectant glare waiting to see if her listener caught it. "But I later found out that what I had assumed to be hard evidence was staged, made to look like a lot more than it actually was, and I realized that I had jumped to conclusions and ruined a real shot of a serious relationship over not controlling my temper and need for revenge."

Amy stared at Spartan as he swished his head at being bored by walking at such a slow pace and for some reason she felt the need to join the intimate discussion, "Wish I could say that I don't know how that feels. Why is it so hard to control your emotions at times like that, when there is so much of your life at stake?"

"I guess I am not going to make it long enough to find that answer, if I ever would have anyway," Charlie snorted at her predicament. "So, long story short, I had to eat my pride and go to Brad and try to make things right. I really thought I had lost him forever, but after he made me grovel for a while he finally softened up and we got back together. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, telling him what I had done and why I did it. Although it took a while, it was worth it when we got back together. We had a wonderful year together that I would have missed out on if I hadn't made the sacrifice and swallowed my pride and gone after him."

"So, what happened? Why didn't things work out after all?"

Charlie explained about the circumstances leading up to the accident and how she ultimately ended up losing what should have been her husband forever. "Life is a precious thing, and no matter how long each of us makes it here on God's green earth, it's just a flicker in time in the grand scheme of things. I wish I had the time to try and keep my daughter from suffering through self-imposed hard times like I did. I am not naïve enough to think she won't make her own mistakes and have her own battles to fight someday, the hard headed little shit," she snickered, thinking about apples not falling far from their trees, "but I wish more than anything that I could be here for her when she screws up and needs to know that everything is going to be alright and do the all the things mom's do for their daughters. I hate the idea that my leaving her like this will hurt her so much and I can't do a damn thing about it."

The older riders paced slowly along on their mounts watching the younger ones lead the way, chattering back and forth and occasionally pointing out potential hazards to make sure no one got into something they shouldn't. Charlie had been using her small camera to record bits and pieces of their journey and she flipped the camera back on, filmed the lead riders, the surrounding mountains, and ended up training the lens toward Amy.

"Woah! Don't need to be breaking the lens before we get to the river!"

Knowing the answer, but asking anyway, "Why would you think that, Amy? You are quite beautiful, you know."

"I-I'm just not comfortable being photographed anymore. Not that I was ever anything special, but after the surgery, and this," gesturing to her stocking cap supporting the loose fitting cowboy hat, "being bald as an onion and weighing what I did when I was in grade seven makes me think the cameras would be better suited to other things."

"Don't be silly. Bald is beautiful! Those things are part of your life right now. It's not like you can pretend that those things didn't happen to you, Amy. It will give you something to look back on someday to show you just how far you have come."

It suddenly dawned upon Amy what her new friend was trying to tell her. Unlike Charlie, she was in a position to pick herself up from where she had been and hopefully someday use days like today as a benchmark, one that should show her the extent of her rise back up to what she had lost, and then exceeded. "I suppose you are right. I need to quit feeling sorry for myself and make the best of things while I can."

"Damn straight! That is what my grandparents told me when I was in trouble back then, and when I finally started to listen to them things started coming together for me. I think it's pretty good advice, so it might not be a bad idea to try it out for yourself, you know?"

"Thank your grandparents for me, and tell them I will do what I can."

"You can thank them yourself…, now, about that shot you spoiled. SMILE!" Charlie teased and focused her lens upon her riding mate.

 _To be continued_


	36. Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

The day had turned into a picture perfect Alberta day in the Canadian foothills with layers of puffy clouds drifting across a brilliant blue sky enhancing the picturesque journey to the southern end of Heartland Ranch. The leisurely ride was a sure fire way to push back against the pressures of life and revive the soul. Amy was thankful for the break as she sat quietly upon a fallen tree enjoying the soothing current of the Sheep River as it laced its way through the valley past the gravel bar. She had always used this place as a retreat from the world when things got a little too busy or frustrating to deal with.

Worn out from a busier than usual morning, the trail boss relished having a few minutes to recuperate. This was the first time she had been on horseback for any length of time since she left for Europe and the ride had left her to realize she had overestimated her physical condition following her recovery from the surgery. She was also glad for the fact that Charlie had handled most of the herding of the two young riders on the trail. They had been very well behaved and not much trouble to watch after all. The world traveler had almost forgotten how peaceful it is in the backwoods of home. It seemed like a different lifetime ago that she had taken in the gentle breezes whispering through the thick canopy of leaves shrouding the natural amphitheater of the river bend. Multitudes of birds singing their carefree tunes and an occasional visit from local wildlife to take a sip from the mountain fresh watering hole kept the picnickers entertained and filled in some nice footage for the video Charlie was committed to recording for her daughter.

Amy remembered, when she was about the age of the younger riders, her mother once told her this is the place she used to visit when she needed to feel better about things. Now the daughter of the well known horsewoman and single mother was better able to appreciate the reasons why. Splashing and squealing from the water pleasantly disturbed the delicate balance of nature with the two little cowgirls in training momentarily preferring to be fish instead, plodding through the gentle current concentrating less about doing grown-up things and more about being their own age. Their laughter and cheerful banter echoed through the rock faces of the deep gorge and brought smiles to the faces of the trail boss and her riding partner who watched nearby capturing it all for the video she was so excited about making for Sammy to keep as a reminder of the good days they shared.

Amy tended the fire they would use to roast a few hotdogs and marshmallows for the picnic lunch they had been looking forward to all morning and Charlie pulled in the refreshing inspiration of it all, "Does it get any better than this?" panning the camera toward her new friend.

"No, I don't think it does. This is my special place," Amy confided. "I always used to come here when I needed to get away from everybody and work things out."

"I can certainly see why you would come here for that," Charlie mused, "This place has a way of pushing all the bad things away and bringing all the good things back," slowly panning back to the frolicking in the river and letting her imagination take her back to being six years old again, many years before all the mistakes, heartbreak, and pain had jaded a child's innocent view of the world. "So, Amy, what were you thinking about when you were six years old? Do you even remember?" circling the video back to the camera shy ranch native.

"Sure do!" the grown up cowgirl dialed through her rolodex of memories. "There was this one day when I was in first grade that I came home in tears. When I got to the house and walked in the kitchen Mom was already there waiting to see what was the matter because she could apparently tell from the way I was walking down the road from the bus that something was wrong."

"Oh, no! What happened?" Charlie asked, the camera still recording.

"There was this girl who had just gotten a new pony and was telling all our friends about it. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing, me included, and all of a sudden, she singled me out and said, right there in front of our whole class, "If Amy had a dad, maybe he would have gotten her a horse too, but I guess since he ran away they are too poor to get her one."

"Oh-my-God! She didn't…?"

"Oh, yeah, she did. You see, a couple of weeks before that, my mom had invited the entire first grade to come out to Heartland. She had borrowed some smaller ponies from a friend of hers so she could do a sort of youth clinic and show all the kids how to handle them and stir up some interest in the ones who had never spent any time around horses. After she was finished everybody thought it was sooo cool, and then after a big cookout under a tent they all got to ride those cute little ponies around the arena until it was time to leave, which nobody wanted to do. Of course, I was a hero and the envy of the first grade, for two weeks, with everybody except for Ashley Stanton. She was so jealous of me that she took the opportunity when she had it to put me in my place, in her way of thinking," hanging her head all these years later recalling how much the girl's words had hurt.

"If I'd have been your mother I'd a beat her little a…,"

"Woah! Woah! Remember, you have your camera on!" Amy reminded her quick tempered friend, amused by her passion in the light of her current condition.

"Sorry, but, boy, what a little…,"

"It's OK. We actually became pretty good friends later, after we grew up. She was married to Ty's best friend for a while."

"Caleb? No way!"

"Yeah, that's a whole 'nuther story! Anyway, Mom turned around without saying a word and went to Lou's room and asked her to finish getting dinner ready for her and Grandpa, and oh yeah, I almost forgot, Scott, Ty's partner at the clinic, he was still living at the ranch at the time. Don't tell her I told you this, but Scott was Lou's boy in the loft. I could tell you some stories about that someday," she chuckled.

"You'd better!"

"So Mom fixed us a couple of sandwiches and took me out to her office in the barn and asked me what was wrong. After I told her what had happened at school, and again never saying a word, she got up out of her chair and went straight to the tack room, picked up her saddle bag and stuffed the sandwiches, chips, and Cokes in it. Next, she handed me a blanket to put on a horse that I didn't have, until then." Amy hadn't thought about that day for many years, having to stop and wipe away a stray tear as the memory slipped into place. "She led a horse out of a stall and handed me the rope. 'I think you have been calling him Buddy? See if you can figure out how to tack him up!' He was my favorite one of the horses she had borrowed for the clinic. I had been spending all my spare time with him and apparently she had heard me call him by the name I had given to him and said, "He is going to need a new home, Amy. What do you think about adopting him?"

"Oh, Amy!" Charlie was wiping her own tears right along with her friend. "Your mom loved you so much!"

"Yeah, she did! But that's not the end of it! We went on our first long trail ride that evening. She was going to wait until the weekend but she knew we had a few more hours of daylight, so after we got the horses ready, plus one more to carry a tent and camping supplies, Mom went in the house and told Grandpa to call my school the next day, I remember it was a Thursday, and tell them that she was borrowing her daughter and I would not be in class until next week."

"Wow! What a cool surprise!"

"I know! But the coolest part is that she brought me on my first longer trail ride right here to this gravel bar. We ate our dinner later that evening around a campfire, just like this one, and talked about school and horses mostly, that was my life back then," she chuckled, "until I passed out from being so tired and she put me in the tent we had set up right over there, in the grass. It was one of the best days of my life, and even though I was only six, Sammy's age, I remember it like it was yesterday." Amy smiled at the warmth she felt, almost as if her mother were there to comfort her one more time and couldn't hold back the tears any longer. "Sammy will remember this, I promise."

Out of nowhere a very personal connection was made. Amy's misty vision of a mother having the forethought to help her daughter preserve what would certainly be one of her best days wiping her own tears while trying to steady the camera and record the moment had put the two women on a common ground that did not involve exes or who won or lost, just a genuine story about a mother's love and how much it means to a little girl all through her life, even if their loved one's time had passed.

Charlie had been filming the entire morning, but she turned the camera off and left the next few minutes only to memory when she sat it down beside her and got up to sit on the log next to her reminiscing friend. She embraced Amy in a shared need to cry out the memories, as well as to ache for the coming stages of her own life and having to leave behind the daughter she loved more than life itself.

Several minutes passed as the women sat together, each lost to their own thoughts watching the fire grow closer to doing its part for the picnic. "I'll find us some sticks to sharpen for the hotdogs and marshmallows," Amy said as she stood and dusted off her backside. It won't be long before we are ready to eat. I'm starving!"

Charlie nodded, "Me too! I should get those two out of the water, if I can. They are having so much fun!"

"Yeah, it's cool to watch them play like that. Kinda makes you wish that you could go back, doesn't it, to being six years old again?"

"Funny you should mention that, because that is exactly where I have been since those two reminded me what it was like," Charlie alluded to the spiritual journey back to days gone by she had been experiencing since arriving at Heartland.

* * *

A cheerful family style conversation circled the campfire, the younger ones dominating their time at lunch with abundant energy still percolating from the adventure none of them would ever forget. No sooner had the last of the puffy white marshmallows been squeezed between the layers of Hershey milk chocolate and graham crackers, Sammy and Katie left their elders in a whirl of crunching gravel and headed back toward the river for a continuation of their version of water sports.

"Did you ever bring anybody out here," Charlie asked out of the blue, "as if it wouldn't be obvious that you would? I can see this as quite the romantic get away from the ol' ranch," wiggling the place where her Wet'n'Wild eyebrows were drawn in, obviously fishing for a story.

Trying to minimize stammering out of awkwardness to the insinuation, Amy blurted, "I'm sure you don't want to hear about me coming here for…, uhh, my romantic life," and waived it off with a dismissive flip of her wrist.

Not letting up, "Oooh, I can see why you would have," the first time visitor prodded. "Getting back to nature with someone special takes on a whole new meaning out here, eh? Talkin' 'bout the birds and the bees, and such?" offering a 'dare ya' kind of devilish grin.

"You aren't going to stop, are you?"

"Don't plan on it!"

"What could I possibly tell you about…, being out here with somebody special that you don't already know for yourself?" tensing at knowing Ty's girlfriend had probably had her own back to nature experiences with her ex-fiancé by now.

"Was it your first time, out here at the river? This would be the perfect place to…,"

Discomfort and dread quickly approached a place Amy had difficulty accepting or thinking about alone, much less face to face with the woman who was beneficiary to the biggest mistake she had ever made, "Look, Charlie, maybe we would be better off talking about something else, anything else, OK. I am _not_ discussing my relationship with Ty with you or anybody else, if that's where this is headed."

"I have got to know, Amy, what made you think you should leave a guy like Ty behind and go away like you did? Was it that bad, having a guy like him think you were the center of his universe?"

"I don't think it was quite like that, Charlie. We were just a couple of kids trying to figure things out as we went and…," stumbling at a tangible explanation was difficult, "I guess we just lost each other, somehow, that's all."

Charlie pushed farther, "Is that the way you see it, that you lost each other?" detecting a crack in the shell Amy had tried to hide in.

"I—I guess so. I mean, I thought we were all set. I thought all the rough patches, you know, getting to know each other hard part anyways, was over. But one thing led to another and, without even knowing exactly when it happened, we started to drift farther and farther apart. We didn't notice it at first, but the arguments started up again, like when we were younger, and things started to come between us. Some things happened, really bad things that were out of our control, and it was just too much for us to fix."

"Ah, the prince!" Charlie continued to test her luck at pushing the former fiancée of the man she loved like nobody else before.

"OK, that is quite enough, Charlie. I don't want to think about him, ever again! That sonofabitch ruined my life and cost me the most important things I had…, and would have either killed me or sent me away to be a slave…, so, no, if I ever hear his name again…,"

"Hold on, Amy! I know it hurts to think about that asshole now," she turned to directly face the woman curling up within herself at the horrible sporadic memories, "but until you face your fears and confront them head on, they will chase you forever. Ask me how I know!"

Amy had trouble recalling the traumatic experience with accurate details, some places left to the unknown because of voids in her recollection about her time in Europe, but from the account her friend, Gabby San Nicolas, had given of her brief stay in Barcelona, it had ended with barely escaping a much more horrific outcome.

Seeing that Amy was at the verge of bailing out on any connection they had made so far, Charlie attempted to justify her prying, "It's not my intention to make you feel uncomfortable, Amy, but you and Ty were more than any casual fling. I can see that whatever happened between the two of you has affected each of you very deeply, and you shouldn't let it keep you from finding a way of moving forward with the rest of your life. Trust me when I say that I get how important it is to let the people you care about know what you are thinking, before it's too late."

"It's already too late, Charlie! What is so hard to understand about that?" Amy bristled at the least likely inquisition bringing up the failure that had effectively ended all of her plans and handed her the future she had not dreamed of. "Is that why you wanted to come here, to rub my nose in it? Me being such an _idiot_ and letting him go?"

"Amy, no, I'm so sorry, no, that is not the reason, not at all!" Charlie was determined to get past the barriers of intimidation and doubt, for better or worse, "Listen to me, I am not going to sit here and tell you that Ty Borden didn't change my life, because he did. Before I met him I had lost faith that there was a guy out there that had the strength, heart, and soul to be the kind of person I would want to spend the rest of my life with, but he showed me that I had given up too quickly. I don't know how you feel about him after everything that has happened, but to me, he has been such an inspiration when I really needed somebody to prove that not everyone is here for taking care of themselves and no one else. I admit that it has been very difficult to get him to let go and trust me, or even more than that, to trust life again, because even though he would never admit it, he was, he is still hung up over the relationship he had with you, and now, just when it looked like I was getting _so close_ to having something special, the kind of relationship I always wanted but gave up on as being unrealistic a long time ago, now I am going to have to leave him to get over another life changing disappointment. The poor guy can't catch a break, and the last thing I want is to leave him alone and heartbroken all over again."

Straining to find solid emotional footing, Amy was at a crossroads with many difficult choices to make. The temptation to be angry at the course their conversation had taken was torn into a conglomeration of feeling humiliated over her failures, regret for the decisions she had made, and true compassion for the heartbreak she could see in the other woman's eyes. The perceptive horse whisperer sensed that Charlie was asking these awkward questions without contempt or seeking opportunity to gloat, and it was her own fault that the door had been left open for the single mother and her daughter to find a relationship with her ex. Quick to know a good thing when she saw it, Charlie simply took advantage of a chance meeting and made the most of it, believing without hesitation in the true value of Ty's heart and trusting a mother's intuition to follow through and see what he was made of.

"I know how much Ty loved you," Charlie picked up on Amy's indecision and wanted to keep the conversation moving forward, "and I can honestly say that I think, deep down, he still does," her voice strained to let out the trapped emotions needing to be set free.

Just when the bewildered cowgirl thought she had been challenged to full capacity in her struggle for stability, the emotional props had been kicked out from under her again. "How can you say that, Charlie? You weren't there when he said those awful things to me, when I went begging for him to forgive me! I know how he really feels now. There was nothing left of us after that night. Ty made sure I understood that before he rode off on his Norton and left me for the last time."

"Amy, he has told me his side of the story, the reason he changed his mind about forgiving you and getting back together. Did you know he was ready to do just that? If not for that package the 'mystery man' brought to him just before he came to see you, things would have been completely different now. I know very well how upset he was that night, and we all know that Ahmed had to be the one who sent it, so the question is, how did he come to have something like that to use and send to Ty in the first place?"

Embarrassed and resentful of the outcome, Amy spent the next quarter hour explaining her side of the tension between her and the prince and the conflict it set off inside her head as well as her heart. Counsellors had explained that some of her indecision and change of personality was likely caused by the damage resulting from the trauma to her brain, known to cause varying changes in personality and behavior. She also confided in the absorbedly interested woman about the unnerving feeling of a loosening anchor to everything she had known and the constant pressure from Ahmed to navigate into a new beginning. As trainer to the royal jumping team, Amy relayed the satisfaction of seeing her name in newspapers and magazines heralding the simple horse whisperer from Canada becoming the new sensation of the equestrian world, fielding all the attention from international success in competing against the best the world had to offer. Everything she could have ever dreamed of was suddenly within her grasp and the feeling of pride was easy to feed upon, making it more difficult to resist Ahmed's relentless efforts at pushing her away from a simpler past with all the possibilities of the world at her feet, always making sure to be the champion of her cause by reassuring that nothing would ever stand in her way due to his undying support.

Amy's gut told her this conversation was unconventional at best and left her fully exposed to a heavy dose of payback in Ty's behalf if the inquirer chose to do so, but the look on the listener's face was not one of hostility or pity. It was more of an understanding and willingness to give someone so defeated the chance to release some of the guilt she had been carrying for all these months with no way to escape it.

Reaching out to clasp her hands around those of the humbled horse whisperer, Charlie give a gentle, reassuring squeeze and nodded in understanding the tactics powerful people used to manipulate the ones they claimed to care about, "I know the type. I have had my own run-ins with creeps like that. They can get into your head and screw with you until you don't know which end is up, especially if they get you in a position of having to depend on them for help."

Again they both sat for a time to let the fast moving private conversation sink in. Ever one for swinging the mood upward, Charlie stood and picked up the camera. "Will you get one of me with the girls?" and handed it to Amy. Knowing the kids had not slowed in the least and showed no sign of wanting to leave anytime soon, she opened up another Coke and asked, "Ya wanna split one? They are bound to run out of energy sooner or later, but I think we have time to have one more of these before we go."

Her throat dry and voice cracking, Amy knew her confidant sensed she could use something to wash down the hurt from her throat and a few minutes to regroup, so she nodded and took the red cup with her half of the bubbling beverage from Charlie's hand before the watchful mother walked closer to the water and yelled, "Hey, you two! Thirty minutes and that's it! We are going to have to get you little fish dried off and ready to ride back if you aren't too shriveled up to fit in the saddles anymore!"

"I'm not ready to leave!" they said together.

"You two are twins and we just didn't know it," Charlie snickered. "If I didn't know your mamma so well Sam, I'd have to say Katie is definitely your sister," causing the swimmers to giggle at the idea.

The adoring mother moved a few steps closer to the playing pair so she could to enjoy the fun they were having for a minute longer, and then she surprised all of the others by removing her shirt, bandana, boots, and jeans and dove head long into the deepest part of the swimming hole, staying under long enough to make Amy get up and start running toward the water thinking she might have to go in after her.

In a burst of splashing, hysterical laughter, Charlie came up between the dazzled youngsters and took a great deal of pleasure in knowing if they needed to pee before she dove in, they didn't now."

"Charlie!" Amy yelled, "You scared the crap out of me!"

"Did ya get all of that? Because if you didn't, I'm going to have to do it again!"

It took a couple of seconds for her heart rate to come down far enough to see the humor in what had just happened, but then erupted in a relieved laughing fit at the mischievous grin coming from the thirty year old, minus about twenty four. "Don't worry, I got most of it, I think. So now I've got what, three little kids to herd back to the ranch all by myself?"

Charlie squinted through the water in her eyes and dared her, "Not if you jump in and join us. Then we would all be six again!"

Amy thought about it for a few seconds, almost deciding getting wet was more trouble than it was worth, until Charlie played the chicken card, "Bwak, bwak, bwak, buckawk," causing the girls to cackle at their bewildered trail boss and repeat the noise.

That did it. Amy fixed the camera on a rock and watched to see that it captured the trio of swimmers, and off came the hat, bandana, shirt, boots, and jeans. She listened to the building anticipation from the other three and set her jaw before taking a leap, cannonballing a splash sure to drench all of them on the way in. When she came up they were still squealing and laughing hysterically at the surprise visit to the swimming hole from the last one standing. "How do you like me now, huh girls?"

Thirty more minutes of swimming, splashing, and games flew past, the afternoon shadows growing longer while they played. "OK girls, everybody out!" Charlie hollered. "We will be the rest of the day getting dried out and back in the saddle, so, let's get a move on!"

After packing up the equipment was finished and the horses gathered together, Amy sent the youngsters on one last trip around the gravel bar to make sure they had left nothing behind. "Everybody ready?" she asked.

"I wanna come back someday, Mommy, can we?" Sammy asked innocently, still under the spell of sharing the great outdoors with her newest friends.

"Maybe someday, Sam!" Charlie audibly struggling in her answer, the first sign Amy had seen of a fracture in the determined mother's solid ploy to make a memorable outing for Sammy knowing there most likely would not be another day like this one.

"Head 'em up!" the trail boss commanded, "Move 'em out!" and led the still soggy team back up the trail toward the ranch.

* * *

"Hey you two," Charlie called out about fifteen minutes into the ride, "what are you doing lollygagging around back there in the dust? Get out front where we can see you!" and reached up to the camera clipped to the brim of her hat to turn it on again.

The younger riders took the cue, their giggling superseded by concentrating on the task at hand as they passed by because the adventure of the day was quickly catching up to them.

Heeling Harley's side to make him catch up, Charlie pulled him up take a stride beside Spartan and his rider as they followed the pair of youngsters up ahead of them, "They will be so tired tonight they will never make it to bed on their own. We will probably just have to leave them where they drop and walk around them until morning!" laughing as she swung the camera back toward her less evasive trail partner.

"What do you say to letting Sammy stay with Katie tonight? You could stay too, if you like. That would save Ty the trip to come after you tonight and having to drag Sammy around in her sleep. They are getting a little big for that now," she smiled.

"You would be OK with that?"

"Yes, after today and getting to know you better, I would be happy to have you two stay."

"Ah, I have bars! Let me make a quick call to let him know what's up."

She could not believe she had just done that, asking the woman who was in a serious, yet complicated relationship with her ex to spend the night at Heartland. But Amy had developed a different kind of respect and admiration for Charlie's true heart, courage, and determination to do something like she had done today for the sake of her daughter and to preserve a part of their lives for a time in the future, a keepsake for Sammy to remember slices of a happier childhood knowing there would be rough times ahead.

Charlie McCrary was obviously worthy of the care Ty showed for her, and Amy felt a strange relief in that, if it had to be someone else who held his heart in her hands, she was glad for it to be someone like her.

 _To be continued_


	37. Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

Potential news about the outcome of today's activities at Heartland Ranch was torture to the co-conspirator. Lisa had hinted, bartered, and finally begged Jack into coming back from her fancier and safely distant accommodations at Fairfield Stables to join in on the unusual dinner Lou had planned when she learned that Sammy and her mother would be staying over. Bringing a fresh homemade broccoli casserole and two fruit pies to contribute to the larger than expected gathering, longtime friend and now step grandmother of the struggling prodigal daughter of the family was stricken with curiosity as to how Amy and Charlie had managed their day together. The temptation to observe the two of them in the same room after spending several hours on horseback was too much to resist even though her stalwart husband had been reluctant to get caught up in the crossfire of the potential disaster that he was betting on.

It was a busy dinnertime around a full table with plenty to talk about by the family and guests surrounding it. Charlie entertained everyone with shining eyes aimed toward her new riding buddy, amused in telling them all about Amy's apparent inability to resist a dare, and the young girls who had been in jeopardy of falling face first in their plates giggled one last time from using every last ounce of their six year old energy too early in the day to make it to the end with anything left of it.

"It sounds like you had an absolutely wonderful day. These girls will never forget this trail ride, as will neither of you from the sound of things," Lisa smiled, overjoyed with the apparent success of the secret mission she had been helping to arrange behind the scenes.

While Lou sealed the last slices of pie into Tupperware containers and the others were clearing the table, Jack declared the evening cleaning duties officially over, "That's good for now, everybody. Let's head on into the living room and have some after dinner coffee or tea and relax a bit, but first somebody had better get these two into bed or else we will have to let them sleep right here at the table," he smiled at Katie and Sammy who were tiredly slumped over in their chairs and dead to the foot traffic around them.

"I will take care of them, Lou," Charlie offered. "But while I have the chance, I would like to thank all of you for the wonderful day here at Heartland for Sammy and me. Lisa, it has been nice to see you and Jack. Thanks for the awesome casserole and pies! Lou, you know how to make your guests feel welcome. This was a lovely dinner. And Amy, I can't thank you enough for taking such good care of us today. I know it couldn't have been easy for you to do this, but today was perfect and we will always be grateful to you."

Lou and Lisa shared a gratified smile as Jack nearly choked in disbelief when the renovated trail boss stepped toward Charlie, hugged her like an old friend, and said, "We all made this day special, for all of us. Thank you for allowing me to share it with you."

"C'mon Brat! Let's get you two to bed!" Charlie put her arms around the slumbering six year old and at her limit of strength, lifted the limp child her out of the chair.

"I've got Katie, we are right behind you," Amy said as she scooped the out-cold niece from her chair, also feeling the challenge in picking up forty pounds of limber youngster.

Lisa watched the women take the children down the hall to their bedroom and then gathered Lou up in a victorious hug, "We did good!" she said low enough that only the three of them could hear.

"What have you two been up to?" the wise and experienced older man asked. "Somehow I get the feeling that this day had a set of jumper cables hooked to it to help get it started."

"I'll tell you about it on the way home," Lisa whispered, hinting her part of the successful plot as she beamed a mischievous smile back to her husband.

* * *

Lisa pulled Jack by his shirt sleeve through the door of the ranch house, "Everybody has had a very busy day. Let's get on home and let these girls get some rest." After giving all three women a goodbye hug, "Charlie, it has been a pleasure to have you and Sammy for dinner, and I just want to say, if there is anything Jack or I can do, just say the word, OK?"

Charlie smiled and replied, "Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate that. I will!"

Driving through the gate at the ranch entrance and headed back to Lisa's more tranquil home at Fairfield Stables, Jack could not put off another second to pry the promised confession out of his wife, "I cannot wait to hear this!"

"OK, busted…, I promise, it was what we all thought would be best. We had to try _something_!" she started, knowing she should feel a little guilty, but she did not feel that way, not in the least.

Jack turned to look his scheming wife in the eye, "We? How many are in this deal, whatever this deal is?" he scoffed knowing whatever had been set in motion, it was already too late to stop it.

Unapologetically filling in the missing details, Lisa began to explain, "Lou confided in me a while back that Ty had approached her about helping him figure out how to adopt Sammy, you know, when the time comes. He knew Lou had experience with the ins and outs of how the system works and he trusted her to give him the straight answers he needed."

"Hold the hell on for a just a minute! Ty wants to adopt Sammy? How is he going to manage that all by himself and still work at the clinic? And besides that, why would he think that the 'system', whoever that will involve, will ever go along with it in the first place? You know the kind of hell they put me through when I tried to adopt Georgie on my own before Lou and Peter stepped in and got it done! Ty is younger, of course, but, I don't know, Lis, you all might be stirring up another big disappointment for that boy! Did you ever think of that? So, you and Lou…, but I get the feeling there is more that you haven't told me?"

"Actually, Charlie's grandmother, Margie McCrary, wanted to meet with Lou and me in Okotoks the other day to discuss some things about Sammy. She and Lou had already been talking because Ty had asked her and Clint if they were OK with it and Lou wanted to include you and me to make sure everybody stayed on the same page, so we had lunch and talked about Ty, Charlie, Amy, and of course, Sammy."

Complicated situations frustrated the old cowboy and this unfolding plot had red flags planted all over it. "Dear Sweet Jesus! What have you women started? And beyond that, how are you planning on finishing it?"

"There are no guarantees that any of this will work, Jack, but it is a damn sure thing that if we don't try Sammy could end up in a foster home one of these days and all of us have sworn to do everything possible to make sure that does not happen! So, what do you say, are you going to help us, or not?"

"God help me, but you know I will if that's what Ty wants to do, and if everybody else involved is OK with it, including Sammy. Just promise me that you understand whenever you start messing around with someone's life like this, it could backfire on you. You had better have a plan for that too. And what's Amy got to do with it, anyway?"

* * *

The two women sat on the front porch side by side swinging their feet back and forth over the edge watching the stars twinkle in the growing darkness when Charlie spoke first, "I meant what I said at dinner about all you did for Sammy and me today. I could not have done it without your help. It meant everything to me to be able to give her a day like this. It was worth far more than anything I could have bought her. I think you are right. She _will_ remember today for a very long time."

"It wasn't just good for you two." Amy continued to allow the unexplainable desire to lay everything out in the open with this one day acquaintance. She let loose of the things weighing her down and taking control of her reservations to share with Ty's current girlfriend the dark side of her failure to keep him for herself. "Besides Katie enjoying the day as much as the rest of us, I have to tell you, I really needed to know the woman who was able to help Ty get over the mess I made out of things between us. I heard some very frightening things about how he handled the breakup and I will never forgive myself for that, but after today I have changed my mind about a few things. For one, I am glad to see that he found someone like you to help him get back on his feet. I can see that you really care for him and have his best interest at heart. And, I can tell that Ty is crazy about you and Sammy. I don't suppose I need to warn you about how protective he is when he gets attached to someone like that, especially a kid."

"No, it didn't take long to see how much of a worry wart he is, but I'll have to give him credit, he is really great with Sammy. Those two hit it off from the first time they met and haven't looked back since. I am thankful for him to be able to help me out with keeping her busy and thinking about happier things right now. I just wish I wouldn't have to be the next one to break his heart."

Understanding the referral, "Some things cannot be helped. It is good that he is able to take care of Sammy like he obviously can do," Amy said. "I always had my idea of how he would be awesome with kids someday and he has proven to be that much and more. It is good that he has found someone to care so much about, especially after I hurt him like I did. He deserves a lot better than what he got from me."

Amy, you do understand that circumstances played as much a part of what happened between you and Ty as anything else, right? The way I see it, the whole thing was like a perfect storm. Ty told me about buying that horse, Charger, and he realizes that putting his life savings at risk without telling you was a mistake. He gets it, how it shook your confidence in his being a reliable partner and that if he would do something that stupid, how could you really trust him as a husband?"

"But he was right, Charlie. Charger was a special horse. Everyone else had given up on being able to work with him, but not Ty. He could see something in that horse that he would not give up on. I understand his need to do it because I have been guilty of the same thing several times myself. In the end, it payed off, bigtime! He showed us all what he knew all along." Amy remembered the one-hundred thousand prize money Ty, Caleb, and she had gotten to split after upsetting the field of top notch competitors at the Hudson Barrel Racing Futurity.

"He still gives you all the credit for winning that day, you know."

It surprised Amy to think her ex would give her credit for anything after the way they had failed so miserably at being a team in the end. She watched her boots swinging under the edge of the porch trying not to let the memories of her biggest failure bring her down from the high of today's successful trail ride with new friends. "Well, I proved him wrong with practically everything else that happened after that day. I made the mistake of thinking I could have the career I had always dreamed about and keep our dreams alive here at home too."

"But, _wow_ , Amy, not many girls have the storybooks they read as children to open up so they can walk right into a fairytale and live it for real. It must have been an amazing experience to be invited onto the prince's team and have all that attention and success so soon working with some of the best bred horses in the world! I can see why things changed for you. They would have for anybody, I think, under those circumstances."

"Things changed, alright. I've heard it said that sometimes life is like a new pair of boots, the fancier they get, the more uncomfortable they become, and that's exactly how it was for me. I felt like I was outside my body watching someone else going through the motions. Everything kept moving faster and faster and the more crazy things got, the more I just wanted to slow down and catch up with myself. But there was never time for that, always something that needed to be done, or someone I had to meet, or somewhere I had to go. I saw some of the most beautiful places in Europe, ate at the nicest restaurants, stayed at the finest hotels, and met all the best known horsemen and women in the world, but the farther I got drawn into all of it, the more I realized that none of it meant anything without the people I loved being there to experience it with me, and I wanted to come home. That is when I decided I had to come home and try to set things right with Ty, but we know how that turned out, don't we?"

Amy braced herself for whatever was coming next, but it surprised her again when Charlie said, "Yes, we know what happened then, but what is done, is done. All any of us can do is to make the best we can out of every day we are given and take care of the people who matter to us. So, tell me about the time you spent after the surgery. Sounds like you made a lot of progress with Lisa and Jack in France and were very lucky to have met some good people in Spain."

"Grandpa and Lisa saved my life by coming to Europe and finding me. If not for her connection with the Alberto San Nicolas and his family I would either be a sex slave somewhere in a third world country, or dead."

"Did you never feel threatened or feel like something wasn't right with that guy, Ahmed?"

"Not really threatened, just, managed is the best way I can describe it. He always had to have the last word and control my every move. I was never anywhere just because I wanted to be, it was always at his request or suggestion, or insistence. Of course, I knew nothing of Europe or the lifestyle they lived and I went along with him as my employer and someone I thought of as knowledgeable in the way things worked on a higher level than I was used to dealing with. He knew all the right people and all the best places, all the connections to make things happen, and I got lost in thinking he would take care of me and not let anything bad happen to me."

"It is starting to sound like your situation borders on the Stockholm Syndrome. He knew how to take everything important away from you and eventually, to make you solely dependent upon him."

"That is exactly the same thing the counselor Lisa had me talk with in France said. He told me that it was Ahmed's intention from the start to take away my identity and create a new one with him as the savior and master of my new existence. Nothing of my old life was left, my engagement to Ty was over, my relationship with my family was ruined, and I didn't even have any of my clothes from home. When he came for me here at the ranch that day, I went from slapping him backwards before I said a word to him to arguing against Lou who was right there beside me arguing against him. Before the argument was over he had Lou and me at each other's throats and me leaving with him on the spur of the moment with nothing more than the clothes on my back. He had me believing I had lost everything, including my self-respect, and that he was the one who could get it back for me."

"He had it planned from the time he brought you that saddle," the well clued in listener offered. "That was when he set everything in motion."

"Ty must have told you about that. 'Miracle Girl'. That's what he had engraved on the silver plaque. It was the most generous gift anyone had ever given me and it touched me to think he appreciated what I had been able to do to help his father's horse."

Ty didn't say anything about that?"

"He would never tell me so, but I knew Ty didn't like it and was probably a little jealous over it, but nothing was ever said so I assumed he had gotten over it."

Charlie agreed, "Yeah, he is a tight lipped one, alright. He would be so much better off if he would just let it fly sometimes, you know? Just get pissed off and get it out there and talk about it."

"But he won't do that!" The frustration still rising to the surface when she tried to describe the man she helped come so far, but lost. "He has always chosen to run away when he felt like something threatened him because he had already had to fight for one reason or another practically every day when he was growing up. That landed him in juvy and headed for a locked cell if it hadn't been for a last chance juvy officer named Clint Riley and my mom working out a deal to bring him here to try working off his probation. I think he started believing the trouble was always his fault because of inheriting some 'bad gene' from his parents and he was destined for the same fate as them. He kept trying to protect me from the guy he thought he might become, in his mind anyway, so we kept having this thing about him leaving me instead of fighting with me, or for me, when we had our disagreements. I never could get past that with him. Ahmed used that very thing to start the trouble that eventually came to a head and ended our relationship."

"I think he has come to understand that, Amy," Charlie reasoned. "Since I have had to slow down so much, we spend a lot of time talking. Can't do much else. I am not as patient as you, so when he started going on about that 'bad gene' thing I ripped him a new asshole right off the bat and told him how stupid it is to have such an idea. It hurt his feelings at first, but I've toughened him up quite a bit. Had to if he was going to be able to keep up with me, or at least, who I used to be."

Amy tried to imagine the verbal assault Charlie must have given to Ty. She knew she had attempted to do the same thing herself, but somehow her emotions would not allow her to stay after him when she had him going, opting instead to get angry and quit before the job was finished. Apparently Charlie had the guts to ride out the confrontations until she got what she wanted, or the gritty cowgirl simply a had knack for fighting. Either way, good for her! And, maybe, good for Ty as well. "I hope you are right, Charlie. If he could ever get past that one demon that has always caused him to lack the confidence he should have, I don't see how anything could ever hold him back from whatever he tries to do."

"Enough about Ty, for now. How is your memory? You said that you can't remember some of the things after you went back to Europe?"

"I can't remember much of anything after arriving in Spain until after the surgery. I do remember getting to France and wondering when Ahmed intended to get me back to the team because it was taking much longer than I thought it should have. I sometimes get these little flashbacks, I guess you would call them, but they don't make much sense because I don't know when they happened. They are little pieces of something that must be part of a bigger story, but I don't have any way of fitting them in where they belong."

"I'll bet you were terrified when you woke up in that hospital and didn't know why you were there."

"Yes, I was. The worst thing was that right away I knew something wasn't right. I asked for Ty because he had always been there when something bad had happened to me, and this time, he wasn't. As far as I could remember, we were still together. It took a lot out of me to come to terms with the things Lisa and Gabby San Nicholas told me about all that had happened. It was like losing him all over again. I could barely function. Lisa or one of the nurses had to help feed me or help me into the bathroom because I couldn't walk. I had begun to think that I would live the rest of my life in a wheel chair until I started to get the feeling back in my feet. I had to work my ass off to even be able to get out of the chair, let alone walk on my own. The therapist was a certified sonofabitch, but because of him I managed to be able to walk pretty quickly. I still have trouble with my balance and I couldn't walk from here to the Dude Ranch to save my life, but I am so much better off than when I went back to France with Grandpa and Lisa that I can't complain at all."

"So, how far did things go with the prince after you got to France?" Charlie asked, testing how far Amy was willing to go in sharing the most disorienting time in her life. "I'll bet that is when he pulled out all the stops to try and impress you."

Amy was hesitant at first, but talking to someone outside her immediate family, not on the clock for psychiatric or medical evaluation, but someone who seemed to have a real interest in her story and for the strangest reason, someone she could trust, had opened her up to sharing things she had not told anyone up to this point after the incident in Barcelona.

"That's what he did, alright. He made sure I knew he was the only way forward for me, and whatever I dared to dream of, he would provide it. He was kind and caring, always attentive to my needs. He knew I had failed in my attempt to come back home and kept reminding me that nothing was left for me here, so from then on, everything was about the future and all the wonderful things we were going to do together."

Not believing she was saying the words as she spoke, Amy recalled aloud the incident in the cave with Ahmed making the first bold move toward total takeover of her mind, body, and spirit, and the reason Ty received the package which eventually was the final nail in the coffin for their relationship. Although she would not go into detail, she confided in the attentive listener about later going out with the prince and having enough wine to make it possible for her to go the next step with Ahmed, a step she vehemently regretted. "That is the night I learned the difference between being made love to and being taken advantage of. I can't say any more about that, for obvious reasons."

"Why not, Amy? If you think you are saving me from facing the feelings you shared with Ty you should know that I am way beyond all of that. I don't have to worry about kidding myself with fantasies or what ifs. There are enough other things to be concerned with now. It isn't like I don't know how he felt about you, and you about him. I can still see it in you, and him too, in fact. It's like it would be the kiss of death if you even look at each other. It isn't because you don't have feelings for each other anymore, Amy, it is because you were both so affected by what happened that the fear of having to feel that much hurt again scares the hell out of both of you."

"There are some things that can never be undone, Charlie. We did love each other, very much, but we hurt each other even more. He is never going to believe me when I tell him that I was faithful to him before I came back to try and start over. I don't believe I could forgive him if the situation were reversed. When someone puts proof like that right in your hands what else are you going to think? Ahmed made sure to kill any chance we ever had at making a go of it right then and there." Starting to realize that the questioning had been turned into more of a therapy session, "Why are we talking about me and Ty? That isn't what today was about, right? We should just remember the day you gave to Sammy and be grateful that it went as well as it did."

Charlie nodded in agreement, "All in all, today was probably as close to heaven as you can come here on earth. I hope this is just a glimpse of what it is like where I am headed, if they will let me in," and shrugged at the idea that even she could be worthy of the honor.

The comment stopped Amy's heart cold. The calm of the evening and resolutions they had managed to agree upon had left her unprepared for a reality check such as this. Having no idea what would be an appropriate response, especially since she and Charlie had only known each other for a day, she still did not want to leave her new friend hanging on such a weighted thought. "I suppose it is hard to ever forget about death, what it will be like when it happens."

"I spend almost every minute of every day thinking about all the things I need to do to make sure my daughter knows that I loved her as much as I possibly could have, and worrying about what will happen to her after I am gone, but every now and then it hits me that it is me who is going on this personal journey of mine and I wonder how long it will be before she forgets what I looked like, you know, before I looked like this," she swept her hand from top to bottom implying her disease corrupted appearance, "or the sound of my voice, or how good it felt for me to pick her up and squeeze every last bit of love out of her that I could. Oh, Amy, who is going to take care of her when Grandma and Grandpa are unable to keep up with her?"

"Do you not have any family close enough to you that could take her in when the time comes?"

"As unbelievable as it sounds, no. At least not that I could ever trust to take care of her like they should. There are distant cousins who I wouldn't let babysit my cat, let alone my daughter, and only one aunt who is older than Grandma, so she can't do it either."

"Maybe there is someone else that you know…," Amy deliberated, hoping for any other possibilities.

The depth of her soul pouring from her eyes, Charlie looked Amy straight on, "That is something that I wanted to talk to you about."

 _To be continued_


	38. Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

Heartland Ranch had an aura about it early in the day, especially ominous on the morning Ty arrived to pick up his girlfriend and her daughter after spending twenty four hours together in the company of his former fiancée. His chest tightened from not knowing what to expect when he pulled up to the front of the ranch house looking for signs of distress, but there was an eerie calm radiating from the dew covered grass around the front porch as he studied it from the seat of the 8S Ranch truck. The good news was that he had not had a phone call requesting an emergency rescue so there was a glimmer of hope that their visit was not a complete catastrophe, as he had feared.

He decided the state of Heartland looked harmless enough to leave the safe refuge of the truck and go for the front entrance. After stepping out onto the gravel driveway and taking a few steps he froze in his tracks as a blurry flash burst through the front door, Sammy taking two long strides across the porch before leaping into the yard with Katie right on her heels running straight for him. They each pulled up to surround him between the truck and the yard gate chattering a mile a minute about riding and swimming and nothing else of much use to his ears because the asymmetric account of their first trail ride together transmitted more like two blaring radio stations competing for the same air space than anything distinguishable.

"Whoa! Hold on a minute!" he held up his hands between the excited girls. "So, nobody had any fun!" he teased.

Again they set off trying to be the first one to give a report of their day together, and when he finally gave up making any sense of the gibbering he bent over and grabbed each of the girls around the waist and tossed them over a shoulder to haul them back to the house as their feet kicked in midair, squealing and laughing too much to be able to say anything more.

He was stopped in his tracks a second time when, to his out and out bewilderment, he noticed his ex-fiancee and current girlfriend leaning a shoulder against opposite poles holding up the roof over the front porch on either side of the steps drinking their morning coffees, noticeably amused by his handling of the hyper-energized reception, and Lou standing in the doorway laughing at the sight of him being ambushed by the mini Annie Oakley saddle club.

Thinking he had been in less unnerving situations, he quipped, "I left them in your care for a day and now you have broken them," trying to blow off his uneasiness with a razzing gripe to his audience. "They were perfectly synchronized young ladies yesterday morning and now they are talking Vulcan…, or something. I couldn't make it out well enough to tell."

Not one to be out-quipped, "We had to loosen 'em up a little bit," Charlie mocked her critic. "You had these little angels wound up so tight you couldn't drive a toothpick up their a…,"

"Whaaat she means to say," Amy jumped in to save the integrity of their coaching technique, "is that we just had to let loose and have a little bit of fun yesterday, right girls?"

"Yeah! It was awesome!" they each got back to being in time with one another.

"See! I have been here exactly one minute and they are fixed already!" he came back with the gloat of a victor.

"Why don't you come in and join us while we finish our breakfast, Mr. Fix-it?" Lou suggested, baiting the hook to make sure he would not refuse coming into the house. "I've got your favorite!"

"Saskatoon waffles?"

"Yup! I enjoyed my free day yesterday by going over to the Saskatoon Farm in Okotoks and treated myself to a nice lunch, and while I was there I decided to bring home a load of berries so I could make 'em just for you, because I had a feeling you would need them this morning!" Lou had an ornery grin when she was amused by someone else's embarrassing predicament. Ty did not miss that the older Fleming sister took a few extra seconds to relish watching him try to analyze the pair of women messing with him as they isolated where he stood in the yard from his favorite breakfast in the dining room before she turned through the door and back into the kitchen to put his batch of batter in the waffle iron.

Ty finally sat the squirming captives back to their feet and looked down on two of the happiest faces he had ever seen. "I take it you had a good time on the trail ride, then?" he asked them, holding up a finger with their small mouths in mid start up mode, "One at a time! Katie, you first, how did it go yesterday?"

The first version was much like the second when they each had had their turn, considerably easier to understand now that he was listening to one channel at a time. They each pushed their riding story as far as they could go on a breath before they had to suck in enough wind to finish describing the day at the swimming hole in three breaths worth of animated detail before Charlie interrupted, "Hey, you guys, give Ty a break and let him eat his Saskatoon waffles, then I promise I will turn you loose on him again after he is finished!"

Katie and Sammy ran to the door and disappeared inside. Ty ran a hand full of fingers through his hair as he took the first step to walk between the two women who stood their ground and made him pass between them before they broke formation and followed him into the house, Charlie's toothy grin smiling at him under the camera as she recorded the whole episode for Sammy's video journal.

Finishing breakfast only took another fifteen minutes, but enough talking was done to fill most of his normal days. As the chatter came from all accounts of the trail ride it was evident that Charlie felt as though taking the chance to drop the clinical trial and prepare for these two days was the right decision. He could not help but chuckle at the three competing for their time to tell one story or another. It was worth all the worry to see them so happy and enjoying life the way it was meant to be lived.

The one disturbing caveat, however, caught his attention. Amy had been conspicuously quiet. He was just as intimidated as she was about being in the same place together and he understood the awkwardness of the close proximity to a troubled past, especially delicate because of sharing it with Charlie. He could see the uneasiness in her eyes as she tried to hold any eye contact to a minimum every time he tested her gaze, but he felt pretty sure she had enjoyed the day as much as the others and it bothered him to see her holding back her joy. Deciding there was nothing he could do about it right now, Ty ended the babbling on, "OK, ladies, I think we had better get you back home before Margie sends out a search party. She is anxious to hear about the day you had."

"Katie is coming with us!" Sammy declared excitedly.

"Awesome! You two will behave for Clint and Margie, right?"

"Yes! We will be out in the barn most of the time anyway. I am going to show Katie all my animals and secret places."

Ty raised his eyebrows to embellish the circus atmosphere, "Boy, Katie! Sammy has quite a collection of really cool animals!"

"She already told me about them. Are we ready to go yet?"

Lou laughed and pecked Katie on top the head with a quick kiss, "Better go get your back pack. I have it packed already so you should have everything you need. Don't forget Pogie, he is on the bed beside your other things!"

"Mooom! I don't need him just to go overnight anymore! I'm almost six!"

"Well, excuse me!" Lou bit her lip trying not to let out a laugh and cause the other adults to lose theirs along with her. Taking another moment before she reacted to her rapidly growing up daughter, "OK, you can put him up on the shelf. I am sure he will be fine while you are gone."

The youngsters wiggled out of their chairs and bobbled down the hall to retrieve their backpacks and necessary items for the next phase of their two day adventure, apparently without the aid of a frazzle worn pink pony who had accompanied Katie in practically every trip away from the house she had taken since her first birthday.

Lou fished for a compliment, "Well, Ty, did you enjoy your waffles?"

His cheeks flushed from his lack of etiquette, "Oh, geez Lou, I was so…, overwhelmed when I got here that I forgot to say thank you for remembering my favorite breakfast this morning!" and going beyond his usual table manners, got up and pecked her on the cheek to make up for his oversight.

Lou's day had been made. All of her loved ones were off to a better than great start for a change and it lifted her spirit immensely as she grabbed the back of his biceps and squeezed his arms while she gave him that look. It was the look of a forthcoming surprise she had, most of the time for the good depending on your point of view, when she was busting to tell him about something in which she was sworn to secrecy.

He then looked down to Amy sitting distant in her chair as she watched the others sharing the moment and mouthed a "Thank you" for going beyond anything he would have expected in making sure the visit went well. She nodded back a shy understanding smile and he realized it must have been hard for her to grasp this concept of this visit as being the thing to do, but somehow she had managed to make the best of their time and pulled it off to make the experience into an outright success.

* * *

The large red truck backed out of its parking spot and turned around the loop in front of the house and up the driveway back toward town.

"I hope you know what you did for that family, Amy." Lou sat beside her distracted sister and tried to get a read on her quietness. "I am so proud of you! Are you OK?"

"I'm just trying to process it all," her younger sister finally responded. "It's a lot to figure out. I thought I knew what it meant to say you loved someone, but now I have seen a completely different meaning of what loving someone really is." Amy had been sitting on the edge of her chair ready to leave for the barn, but settled back in her seat realizing she needed to take the time to talk to her big sister now that they had started this conversation and prepared to entrust Lou with the things Charlie had shared with her at the end of the previous night. "Charlie stopped her treatments just so she could build up the strength to come along on Sammy's first trail ride. She didn't think she had enough time left to regain the strength to do it if she let the treatments go on. It amounted to an all or nothing bet. If the day went well, and thank God it did, she would be able to give her daughter a memory of the two of them that Sammy can keep for the rest of her life. If it went badly, it would mean she gave up on her treatments for something much less than she hoped for."

"I know, Amy. It took a lot of guts for Charlie to do what she did. Like her or not, it is amazing to think how she put herself at risk to do this for her daughter. How much courage does it take to even think about doing something like that?" Lou watched her sister, still processing everything she had experienced over the past twenty four hours, "So, tell me, did you like her after all? I mean, she is really funny, once you get to know her."

"I can't believe I am saying this, but I really enjoyed being with her on the ride and at the picnic. I admire her, the way she loves her family and manages to keep a positive attitude, at least the part she lets us see, is amazing. She is still full of life and wants so badly to be there for Sammy and her grandparents…, and for Ty."

"How do you feel about that, I mean, the way she and Ty seem to get along so well?"

"I don't know, Lou. I am happy for Ty that he found somebody to care for and to help him move on. I think she genuinely cares about him and she really is fun to be around. I am sure that helped make it easier to get past feeling as discouraged as he was, but I can't say that I am good with seeing someone else with the guy I love. It is my fault that I lost him, I get that, but that is no consolation for the way I feel when I see her look at him, and the way he looks back at her."

"But Amy, the harsh reality is that Ty is soon going to be hurting again, and he will be needing all of us while he has to recover from his loss."

"Yes, he will, but there is more, Lou. Apparently Ty has asked Charlie if she agreed that he would be the best one to take Sammy to live with him after she is gone and her grandparents can't take care of her anymore. He has also talked about it with her grandparents and they are all in favor of having Ty try to make it official. The problem is, they are afraid the court will not go along with the request because Ty is an unmarried young professional who is committed to his work and they would prefer instead to find an established married couple to take a six year old girl like Sammy."

"Charlie told you this?"

"Last night, while we were out on the front porch talking, she told me a lot of things, like how Ty wants to adopt Sammy and how worried she is that someone needs to be there for him when the time comes. She really believes Ty loves Sammy and Sammy loves him too. She asked me if I thought he could do it if the court agreed to let him try."

Lou was terrible at acting surprised when she was not. "Amy! What did you say?"

"I couldn't say anything at first, not because I didn't think Ty could do it, but Lou, a year ago Ty and I were planning our wedding! Now we are practically strangers and he is planning on trying to adopt another woman's daughter. I am having a hard time processing all of this. I mean, I want him to be happy, and I believe he would do anything he could to take care of Sammy and make a good home for her. It's just that things are so different now, and I am doing some hurting of my own."

"I know, Amy, but you did give her an answer, didn't you?"

"I told Charlie that Ty would be a great dad. It would be a life changer for him, no question about that, but I can tell he is ready to take care of Sammy like he should. You have seen how they are when they are together. It is almost like they were meant to find each other. Ty loves Sammy and there is no question how she feels about him. But…,"

"Buuut?" Lou urged her hesitant sister along.

"But I think they are also right to worry that the court will prefer a married couple over a young single man to take custody of a six year old girl."

Lou needed to see where Amy was leaning in the decision, "What do you think would be best for Sammy, if _you_ had a choice?"

"Charlie told me she has started to have bad dreams about what is going to happen without her being here to make sure everything goes like she wants it to. I promised her that Sammy and Ty have a lot of people who love them will not allow the system to keep them apart. I just hope I don't make myself into a liar because it would be a terrible shame if that were to happen. I just wish there was more that we could do to help.

"You might be surprised, Amy. Promise me you won't be mad…,"

"Huh? Mad about what?"

"Promise." Lou repeated her demand.

Amy could tell her sister knew more than she had been letting on, "Let's have it, Lou!"

"I didn't hear you promise."

"Lou!"

"OK, OK! Actually, Ty came to me a while back and asked me to help him figure out how to adopt Sammy. I told him I had the same concerns you and I have been talking about today, but you know how determined he is when he sets his mind on something, so I made a deal with him. The first part of it was to start bringing Sammy here to the ranch and spend some time with her to make sure they got along when they were away from her family and the security of home. Clearly, that went even better than I had hoped for. Those two are getting to be as close as any father and daughter and I am convinced they have come to love each other just as much as if they were. But, it will still be hard to convince a court that Ty could do it alone."

"Sooo, what was the second part?" Amy asked.

"I told Ty if I was going to help him that I would be honest and tell him what I really thought about how things were going. When the first few visits proved successful I decided it was time to do some checking around to see if we were just being crazy or if this could actually work. So, the first call I made was to Bar Bilsen. I asked if she thought we should pursue this idea and of course she wanted to talk to Ty before she would give an opinion. I made him an appointment to see her, which he did. That went very well and Bar has agreed to testify in Ty's behalf. So I then met with Clint Riley and made him agree to speak off the record. He confirmed our concerns about Ty being a single young professional causing the court to lean in the direction of finding a married couple to take Sammy."

Amy took in the new information, then asked, "Where does that leave him now? He isn't thinking about giving up, is he? Are there any other options?"

"Well, that brings me to the third part of my deal with Ty. I have told him straight up how it is, just like I promised him I would. The reality being that he has a slim chance of getting custody of Sammy as things now stand when the court hears his case, and that if he really wants this to happen he had better think about his single status, sooner rather than later."

 _To be continued_


	39. Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

Clint peeked out from under the hood of his old Chevy truck from inside his garage as Ty parked the big red dually in front of the ranch house. Charlie suspected he was out there more in anticipation of their arrival than actually doing any meaningful work to his well-maintained pride and joy. The old man wiped his hands on a paper towel and hurried to meet them while the crew of four exited the truck, "Say, now, I heard ya'll had a real big time on your ride yesterday!"

Sammy started off first, excitedly telling her great grandfather about her adventure as Katie stood by quietly, a little too shy with the unfamiliar older man to participate in the play by play.

Waiting until her little chatterbox had to come up for air in the richly detailed account of the riding trip, "OK, everybody, how about we move it on into the house and get our stuff put away?" Charlie suggested, impatient to speak with her grandmother about her mini vacation and how to proceed with the next step in her plan after her talk with Amy.

"Hey! There's my girls!" Margie put out her arms for the hugs she expected, the great granddaughter winning out over her mother as the first one to greet her. "Katie, I am so glad you got to come and see us! Sammy has so many things she wants to show you! Annnd, I have a brand new batch of cookies fresh out of the oven that need to be tested. Do I have any volunteers?"

"Yeaaa!" both girls cheered together.

"I see what you mean! They are _sooo_ much alike, these two!" Margie shook her head at seeing how the new friend had made a huge difference in keeping Sammy focused on the present and not toward the uncertain future, just as Charlie had described over the phone. "When you girls are finished testing those cookies, I need a full report on what you think of my new recipe! Ty, if would you get some glasses of milk for them to wash it down with, I might even let you cast a vote along with the girls!" winking at Sammy's mother and tugging on her sleeve to draw her into the family room and get to the questions she was bursting to ask, Clint following anxiously behind.

Clint broke in first, "So, Amy said she wouldn't be interested?"

"That isn't exactly what she said, Grandpa. She was absolutely shocked when I asked her if she would consider getting back together with Ty, and I am sure she was too shaken up to be able to think about what I asked of her right then to put much thought into it. I mean, how awkward could it have been, right?"

"Were you careful to explain how important the next few weeks and months are going to be?" Margie followed up.

"Of course, Grandma! I took the time to tell her what I have been thinking about and the different scenarios that could play out for Sammy depending on the way things go in the next couple of months. She feels like Ty would be a great father, someday, and she believes he would do everything he could to make sure Sammy has what she needs to be happy, but she also had trouble wrapping her head around my proposal. Can't say that I blame her."

"I know it had to be a big surprise to have Ty's new girlfriend to say the things you did to her, but I am sure it set her mind to thinking about a few things," Margie prodded, considering what needed to be done if the first option was off the table.

"I'm sure it did, but she thinks, like the rest of us, Ty will be turned down if he tries to go to the court on his own, even with the testimonials we have lined up."

Trying to decipher all of the new facts, Margie asked, "After you have talked to her for yourself, do you think Amy still loves Ty?"

"I am positive she does, Grandma, whether she is ready to admit it to herself or not. It's just that she feels so guilty about what happened between them that she believes Ty could never really forgive her and get past it, and if she were to try to talk to him again and fail like the last time that it would push him even farther away. She is sorry for what happened, I really believe that, but all she is hoping for right now is to get back on friendly terms with him someday, if she can, because he was the best friend she has ever had. She told me that is the part she regrets the most, losing her best friend."

The business sense in the old man took over, "OK, then, if you can't get Amy on board where does that leave us? Have you even bothered to ask Ty anything about all of this?"

"No, Grandpa, I haven't. Not yet. I needed to see what my options were before I said anything to him," replied the younger chip off the old businessman's block.

"I understand, sweetie, but I don't see how you can keep doing this, planning these decisions that will affect his life without including him in the process," The normally quiet but unquestionably wise old man spoke. "Nothing is going to work if it isn't in Ty's best interest, as well as Sammy's, so as far as I am concerned, you need to take care of this, right now. As soon as the girls are busy out in the barn, Charlie, you need to talk to Ty and ask him where he is with everything before you do anything else. Got me?"

It was not often that Charlie had experienced her grandfather being so pointed with her, but she knew his motive and nodded back in agreement, "Yes, Grandpa, I know. It's just that…, I don't think I have ever been so scared. How did I let myself get to a place in my life where I have so little means to protect my baby girl? I want her to be safe and happy, and Ty is the only one besides you two that I would ever trust her with."

"He needs to know that your grandfather and I will support him either way, just as Lisa, Lou, and Jack have said they would do," the unwavering grandmother added. "He mustn't come to think that we are pushing him into something he does not feel comfortable with, but he should also know we are all here, and will always be here for him when he needs us, whether he decides to go ahead with his plans to adopt Sammy, or not. It needs to be his decision, Honey, in his own time and in his own way."

* * *

Charlie stood with Ty at the sliding glass door watching the girls pause in the flower garden to pet Sassy after the wiggly kitten hopped up on the bench beside the path hoping to make up for being so neglected the past few days. They were on their way to the pen full of miniature donkeys, the first stop of Sammy's tour of her private menagerie, and Charlie squeezed into the man still holding a glass of milk and a half eaten cookie saying, "Come with me for a minute, before you leave?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"I need to talk to you about something," she said, opening the door and leading him into the flower garden to the bench left vacant after Sassy had chosen to follow the girls out toward the barnyard. "I need to tell you some things that you should know."

Given the uncertain nature of any given day with Charlie McCrary, Ty braced himself as he usually did these days when the fearless woman wanted to say something in private, never sure of how he might need to react, "OK?"

"I got to know Amy pretty well yesterday."

"That's good," he supposed, then thought of all the possibilities a day full of unsupervised interaction between his ex and his present significant other could exhume, "isn't it?"

"You may not believe me when I say this, but I really do like her."

"Well, it isn't like I really know much about her anymore, but if she was like the girl she used to be then I could see how you would. I take it that the trip lived up to all your expectations then?"

"It was the best day I could have ever hoped for, Ty. Amy was awesome with the girls, and with me. I can see why she caught your eye after you got to the ranch, the beautiful farmer's daughter helping you pitch hay and…,"

"Charlie, please, just stop! I know you like to have your fun at my expense, but Amy isn't one of the things I want to talk about, OK?" he snapped, then folded when he felt her reaction at being shut down so abruptly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to react like that over talking about Amy, but I am probably still a ways off from the thought of her being something to laugh about."

Leaning into his side and cupping her hands around his arm, "I shouldn't have put it like that. I'm sorry too, but I do have some things to say that I think are important for both of us and Amy is part of the discussion, so, will you promise to listen to me and not shut me out?"

Only nodding his acceptance of her proposition, Ty remained silent from dreading what she might bring up.

"You need to be honest with me about how you really feel about Amy. I need to know…,"

"Whoa! What did she say to you? I have never come close to implying…,"

"Easy, Doc!" Charlie leaned forward and shook his arm in her hands as she looked him straight in the eye. "Just hear me out." After waiting until she felt that he was once again ready to listen, the unflappable woman took the next step in coming clean with all that he did not know about the behind the scenes interactions she had instigated. "Amy said very little about you, actually. I had to pry almost everything out of her at first, but believe it or not, we really did have a pleasant and meaningful conversation that lasted all day long."

His shoulders slightly drooping at thinking, _'Oh, God, what now?'_

"It wasn't like what you are thinking!" She tried to laugh at his predicament, but realizing how fragile the moment was knew she should get to the point soon. "Amy was a gracious host. After we got more comfortable with each other we talked about Sammy and Katie and how well you had prepared them for the ride, how cute they were together, how I am dealing with my illness, about how she was recovering from her surgery, what her plans were now that she is back home, you know, that kind of thing, just casual stuff anybody would ask."

He communicated to her the _bullshit_ look, the one he used when he knew she was shoveling a load on his head, "That takes care of the first hour or so, but we both know you didn't leave it at that."

"I did!" she defended herself, "Until later," she grudgingly gave up with how well he had gotten to know her.

"Let's have it, what did you talk about?"

"The girls had a really great time while they were playing in the river, and while they were busy Amy and I had a chance to talk about…, things."

His face reddened and the improvising coordinator could see his patience nearing its limit. "Look, Ty, I just wanted to get to know the girl you loved so much, and to see if I could figure out why you did. She told me about growing up on the ranch and being a horsey girl, just like her mom, about how you and her were like Lou and Scott 2.0, how she and her sister had talked about their first loves and wished they hadn't hurt the two men that should have been the loves of their lives if things had worked out differently."

"Annnd?" he knew there was more to come.

"After dinner and the girls were in bed, we had some private time to talk some more," she inched carefully forward. "That is when Amy opened up about the prince and what she understands about why things got so complicated between you two."

Ty could not take any more of hearing about Amy's time with the prince, the very thought of Ahmed threatening to breech the borderline of his temper, and got up from his seat to walk away at the brink of leaving her sitting there alone. Going on to the clinic for a needed cool off period seemed to be the wisest choice before he collected himself enough to stop and turn to face Charlie remaining silent and desperately trying not to say something he knew he would have to apologize for later.

The committed woman stood in front of his pacing and said matter of factly, "You need to let me finish, Ty. It's important to me, to Sammy, and to you."

He stood motionless when out of pure determination Charlie blocked his movement. Still angry with her persistence but unable to deny the strong will he admired so much, Ty put his hand gently at her back and moved her to the bench where she patted the seat beside her for the second time and waited for him to rejoin her.

"There are parts of what happened that she can't remember. You have to understand, she was already traumatized by the injury from the kick to the head, but what you do not realize yet is how the prince abused her from the time she left with him to go back to Europe. She remembers enough to know how lucky she is to be alive after the prince snapped at her for rejecting him." Charlie felt the shudder running through her grasp of his arm at the unexpected shock from what she had told him.

"Rejecting him? The last I saw of them it looked like they had made all the decisions that needed to me made."

"Maybe it seemed that way at first, but Ahmed tried to take control of her in every way. He attacked every part of her former life and started to separate her from anything that tied her to her past, her old lifestyle, her family, and you." Finally getting a curious response, she continued, "Amy was very fragile at that time. Your rejecting her like you did destroyed her. Did you know that?"

Feeling defensive, Ty countered, "I knew she didn't take the last things I said to her very well, but she never did take rejection well. I figured she would go back to her royal lifestyle and never look back, like she was going to do when she sent me home with her engagement ring."

"She was just confused by everything that was happening to her, Ty. The prince was playing with her head and she was vulnerable, both mentally and physically."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that a relapse from her physical trauma caused unbearable pressure inside her head and altered the way her brain was able to react to things that were happening to her. At the same time, losing all that was important to her here in Alberta, or so she was led to believe, added to the possibility of ruining everything she had gained professionally from her first tour. All of the success and potential for furthering her career were always being threatened by the prince and constantly kept her in defense mode. With nobody to back her up and being so defenseless against a manipulator like His Royal Highness, things deteriorated quickly. She was desperate to try and find a way out of there. Her whole life was being pushed over the edge and she didn't know how to stop it. If it had not been for Lisa and Jack following her to Europe and finding a way to help her, she would probably be dead right now and none of you would ever have known for sure what became of her."

"I am honestly sorry that her dreams didn't work out for her, but it was her choice to leave and I can't help what happened to her because of Ahmed."

"I expected for you to feel that way. I just wanted you to know some answers to a few of the questions you must have been asking yourself all this time, so now you have a better understanding why things happened like they did."

Ty thought about what Charlie had said, and then asked, "Why would you be so interested in wanting me to know all of this? What happened between me and Amy is in the past where I left it so maybe we should just leave it at that, OK?"

Charlie was almost never afraid to say exactly what was on her mind, but she teetered back and forth with what she needed to say next at watching Ty deal with the unpleasant memories she had pulled back up to the surface from where he had buried them, "Those are some of the things Amy told me. I only want what is best for you, and I respect who she was to you, so I thought you should know. It is also time for me to tell you what I said to her…,"

* * *

The barn was quiet except for the back and forth nickering between the two remaining horses after Amy had turned the boarders out into the open field. "Don't worry boys. I have something planned for you today, if you are up to it. What do you think about helping me take care of something I should have done a long time ago?" She gave Spartan a few pats on his neck and opened the gate to his stall before leading him to the cross ties which would give her the chance to check him over for any indications he would not be up to the journey she had decided on taking back to the river. This time she intended to camp alone for the night and use the solitude for untangling the new set of twists being knotted into her life.

"I wanted to catch you before you left," Lou walked cautiously into the barn, approaching her disconcerted sister with care not to upset her any further than she already had. "Amy, I'm sorry for just springing all of this on you like I did, but I thought it was time for you to come to grips with what is at stake and where things stand with everyone. I know you are upset with us…, especially with me, and I don't want to leave it this way between us. Why don't we sit down and talk about it before you go?"

"What, so you can keep playing God and decide what you all think is best for everybody?"

"It's not like that, Amy, I swear! We all want the best for you, just like we do for Ty, Charlie, and Sammy. Don't you agree that this will be best for everybody right now?"

"You want me to say that I think it is a good idea for Ty and Charlie to get married? I think it is a _great_ idea! Why wouldn't I?" Amy answered contemptuously, stomping off to the tack room.

Lou followed her, defending her proposal, "Because that is the plan we had in place if you told Charlie that you wouldn't talk to Ty about getting back together. We have all talked to the necessary people, the doctors, lawyers, juvenile supervisors…, everybody, and Ty not being single is the best shot he has to sway the court into going along with him taking custody of Sammy after Charlie…, after she is gone. It isn't about Ty choosing someone else over you! It is to make sure Sammy has the best chance to be with the people she loves."

"Have you even mentioned any of this to Ty? Is he OK with it too?" knowing the sometimes over protective man would be torn apart from his natural tendency to take on everyone else's problems and make them his own.

"Margie, Clint and Charlie were going to talk to Ty after they got back home to tell him what we had all found out from the professionals about the things he will be dealing with at a court hearing. I haven't heard from Margie so I don't know how things went with them yet."

"Who is 'we'? You keep saying 'we' like it's some sort of committee, or something."

Lou sat on her mother's old desk in the office and waited for Amy. "Please come here and let me explain," she asked again.

Amy tossed the saddle she carried from the tack room across the top of Buddy's gate and walked briskly into the office, plopping into a chair and giving a Lou a look only sisters get when one is angry at the other. "This ought to be good," she jeered.

What Lou thought would be resolved with a short explanation turned into twenty minutes of probing interchanges with her little sister who, as it turned out, was more hurt than angry, and followed up with her explanation to ease the tension that had cropped up between them again, "Amy, none of us ever thought this would be a forever kind of solution, obviously, but time is not on Sammy's side. And just so you know, I think Ty would have tried to take care of Sammy no matter what. He loves that kid, you have seen it for yourself. He would do anything for her and he will fight for her best interest, whatever it takes. We have all tried to pitch in and do what we can to help him or else someone else, someone she doesn't even know, will end up taking that little girl away from the family and the life she loves, so, can you at least try to see where we are coming from? We _cannot_ let that happen, not if we can help it! Would you expect us to do anything differently?"

Feeling misunderstood and deflated after the latest unraveling, Amy took a few seconds to consider the passion within her sister before she answered, "Of course not, Lou. Sammy deserves everything you and the others have tried to do to give her the best chance she has to come out of this with a life she can look forward to, eventually. It's just that all of our lives have been jerked around from every direction lately and I feel like we have all lost control of everything, like our lives are going wherever they go and we are just along for the ride."

"Please, Amy, just give it some time. Everything will work out for the best, the best we can make it, anyway." Lou tried to console the defeated one sitting on the edge of the chair, elbows resting on her knees and eyes focused on the cracks in the old wooden floor.

Knowing her sister's anguish over the pressure to make big decisions without having time to grasp the proposal, "Why were you so quick to tell Charlie that you and Ty could never be together again? Charlie only wanted to set things back to a place where you two could get along again, to see if her suspicions were right, and then see if you two could find a way to work out your problems together."

Amy nodded vacantly, "I thought she was jumping to conclusions, that Ty would never forgive me. I told her why but she had apparently given it a lot of thought and told me she was serious, then went on to tell me how she would do everything she could to get Ty to go along without going into a tailspin. She wanted to help us adopt Sammy together. She also said that she believes Ty still loves me, deep down, and she felt like, with a little time, we could maybe get past everything that has come between us. She was convincing, Lou, and I let myself believe for a minute that it might actually be possible to erase all the screw ups and fix things between me and Ty, but I was only grasping at smoke thinking it could actually happen. I am the one who saw his face that night when I asked him to forgive me the first time. That night was something neither of us is ever going to forget. It was awful!"

"Oh, Amy. I am so sorry! I have to admit that it was a pretty far-fetched idea. Ty took your giving back his ring really hard. We shouldn't have expected either of you to let all those things go so easily. Charlie and the rest of us were maybe a little too ambitious, even if it was for Sammy's sake, but I thought Charlie could ask Ty to do anything right now, and he would do it. Think about it, Amy. Would you have thought a few days ago that Ty would ever speak to you again, never mind having a civil conversation? Charlie is the one who asked him to come here and see if you would work with the girls and take them on the trail ride. I guess part of it was her way of testing both of you to see if there would be any possibility of the two of you getting along again. He is still the same guy you loved, Amy, even better than before, and you are much closer to being you again, so I let myself imagine for a minute that you could make him see that…, someday."

"I wish I could Lou. I mean that, but …,"

"Maybe you still can, if you just be yourself and let him find you again, Lou insisted. "You are not the first person to ever go through an experience like you had with Ahmed. You are not alone in this like you think you are."

"What do you mean? How can anybody screw up as badly as I did?"

"Well, there was this other farm girl I know whose first love was a pain in the ass when he first showed up to work out his probation at her family's ranch. He also lived in the upstairs loft of her grandfather's barn and turned out to be a really awesome boyfriend after she figured out how to adjust his attitude," smiling as she remembered the nights sneaking out to the loft so many years ago. "But she couldn't wait to get out of the small town she was raised in and go off to see the world. She broke his heart when she left, but she thought there was much more to life than staying in a small town and having babies because there was a big old world out there and she had to go see it. She got excellent grades in school and, because of her hard work, landed a fantastic job opportunity in New York City. She took the job as an apprentice and did very well fitting in to the new lifestyle. Soon the very handsome CEO of the company took her under his wing and taught her the ins and outs of the business, the things they can't teach you in school. Everything was going better than she had ever hoped for, new clothes, successful friends, and the money she was raking in was beyond her imagination."

Lou now had Amy's full attention, watching her realize she was getting the story of her older sister moving to the big city she had never heard before. "Things went so well for the first two years that she rarely called back home to check on her family. She felt like they were a part of her past, not her future. Her boss started inviting her to go along on business trips to the most fantastic places and the very ritziest hotels for one business venture or another. The workload increased and before long all of her ties to everything outside of work, and to him, were lost. He kept challenging her with new projects, introducing her to influential people, and making sure she got credit for some of their more lucrative successes. One night in Chicago they were celebrating another big deal coming through and she had had a little too much to drink. The next thing she could remember was waking up the next morning in her boss's bed and feeling like she was so tired she couldn't even move. He was already gone to meet with the people they had made the latest deal with and left her a note saying 'I will be back at 1 pm. Be packed up and ready to go to the airport.' She felt like she had been beaten, and in fact, she had. When she went to shower she was so sore she could hardly walk and when she stood in front of the mirror was shocked to see bruises all over her body. I mean, from head to toe, front and back, bruises as big as a man's hand, everywhere she looked. When she confronted him about it, all he did was laugh it off and say that they both had a great time and he would get her a day at the spa to help her feel better. It took another time in Denver to make her believe that he would intentionally set her up for being abused. Turns out, he slipped something in her drink and after she was too knocked out to know what was happening he helped her back to his room and did some disgusting things to her without her even knowing about it. The second time was too much for her and she told him that she would not be traveling with him again. One week later she got a company email notifying her that she was under investigation by some internal ethics committee for inappropriate behavior while conducting business for the company. The next thing you know she was put on mandatory leave pending the result of the investigation. Her boss claimed he tried to talk to her about her excessive drinking but said she had a severe drinking problem and needed help. Before she knew it, she was out of a job. It took two more years to get back on her feet with another more respectable company and was just beginning to get her confidence back when she got a phone call telling her that her mother had been killed in an accident. That is the day her world changed again, forever."

Amy listened until Lou was finished, the older Fleming sister visibly shaken to tell the story for the first time to another living soul. "Lou, I'm so sorry. I had no idea!"

"People go through difficult times whether anybody else knows about it or not. You are not the first one to regret your mistakes, Amy, and you won't be the last. You have to remember, it isn't the mistakes that define who you are or what you will become, it's what you learn from them and how you make the most of your life from that day forward," she reasoned. "Look at me. I found out that I didn't need the big city life, or a man to feel successful. My life has gone exactly nowhere I thought it was going, but I feel like I am a better person for the experience because now I know, without any doubts, what really makes me happy."

Amy stood up and hugged her sister, thanking her for sharing a story that was not all that different from her own effort to leave the nest, "I guess I haven't been a very good sister, have I? Somebody should have been there for you, like you are for me," she said.

"Oh, but they were!" Lou explained. "If you remember, I spent a lot of time with Scott after I came back home and tried to fit back in around here. He was still there for me when I needed him, even after I hurt him so much when I left here thinking I was going away to bigger and better things. Never underestimate a true love, Amy. They are rare and precious, and maybe you have some better times ahead as well."

* * *

Lou brought a saddle bag full of enough supplies to make Amy's overnight trip to the river more enjoyable. "Here, this should do for tonight," furrowing her brow when she noticed the "Miracle Girl" saddle being cinched to Buddy's back. "I am surprised to see you using that thing," she said.

Amy never looked up. Instead, she busied herself with fastening the buckle on the cinch, looping the loose end through the silver eyelet, and walking over to the bench to fetch a box of matches, some starter fluid, and a collapsible shovel to secure on Buddy's back along with her tent.

Her mouth forming an 'Oh', Lou didn't see the need to pursue the question as her lips rearranged into a wry smile as she handed over the second saddle bag. "Be careful, and I hope you get the answers you are looking for out there."

* * *

With the evening meal finished and Georgie out in the barn for night check chores before coming back in to get ready for bed, Lou watched the time and clouds pass by the kitchen window as she dried the dishes thinking about Amy and Ty, Charlie and Sammy, and the way their lives had become intertwined. Interfering in the grand scheme of things could be risky, but this time, despite her grandfather's misgivings about all they had attempted to do, she refused to feel guilty for pitching in with Lisa and Margie to see if there was anything they could do to help each of them find a way to cope with unfortunate circumstances that life had dealt them. They would all find their own way eventually, but a gentle push in the direction couldn't hurt, could it?

A cloud of dust glowing in the evening sunset over the top of the hill caught her eye, "Who could that be at this hour?" she muttered to herself. A moment later she recognized the old blue truck as it turned through the gate a little faster than usual. "Uh- oh! This can't be good."

 _To be continued_


	40. Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

The old blue GMC was consumed by the cloud of dust boiling up from the driveway, it's driver's door already opened as it rolled to a stop. Before she could prepare her library of excuses, Ty was up the steps, across the porch, and through the front door, "Lou?"

"Hey, Ty!" the longtime friend greeted him with an extra heavy dose of chirpiness. "I saw you coming and made you a cup," reaching to hand him a steaming offering of tea as if she hadn't noticed his irritated entrance and smiled innocently in light of the ass chewing she was sure her infringed upon 'little brother' was fixing to let loose on her.

Looking around to make sure they were alone, "Is Georgie out in the barn?"

"Yup, doing night check," she answered.

"Jack and Lisa?"

"Fairfield."

"Where is Amy?"

"She left a few hours ago," an innocent tug of a shoulder shrugging off the question.

"What are you and Lisa doing? Margie says you three have been scheming to put me and Amy back together. Have you lost your freaking mind?"

Lou put her cup of tea on the kitchen counter and answered calmly in defense, "Ty, I know you are upset, but…,"

"But what, Lou? Why can't you leave well enough alone? I spoke to Amy when I had to and I tried to be civil when I did it for everybody's sake. I will be the first to tell her that I really do appreciate what she did for Charlie and Sammy, but we have both been through nothing short of hell for way too long and I gotta know, what the hell did you three think you were going to accomplish by putting us in a situation that I am sure she is no more comfortable with than I am?"

"Before I say anything about that, I need to know what happened after you got Charlie and Sammy and Katie to her grandparent's place. Is everybody OK?"

"Sammy and Katie know nothing about any of this. Sammy is busy showing Katie around her zoo, but Charlie is…. She said she talked to Amy about us getting back together while she was here. Was any of this your idea? Because if it was…,"

"No! Ty that was not my idea!" trying to stay ahead of the flustered man's anger, "But, what did you say when she brought it up?"

"Whoever hatched this plot should know that Charlie has locked herself in her room and won't talk to anyone. Margie can't even get in there to see her. She does _not_ need this right now! I am worried enough about her health as it is without all of this drama being thrown into the mix."

Lou was surprised to hear of the setback, "What set her off like that?"

"Well, when she dumped that crazy-assed plan on me I told her how bad of an idea it was and we started arguing about her getting too carried away with pushing things that she had no business pushing, and then, before I knew what hit me, she turned everything right around and asked me to marry her instead. It wasn't like I hadn't thought about asking her myself because it might be the only way I can keep Sammy after she is gone, but I hadn't quite gotten there yet."

Lou tried to envision the interaction in the heat of the moment, Charlie growing desperate to find a solution to her need for making sure her daughter would be safe and Ty trying to decide how to do the right thing without going too far, too fast. "What did you do? You didn't say anything to hurt her, did you?"

"I guess it wasn't what I said because I was so surprised I just stood there like an idiot. Charlie can fly hot quicker than anyone I have ever met and when I didn't say anything she got severely pissed off and started yelling some pretty rough things at me." Red in the face and half out of breath, he complained further, "Margie tried to head off the argument, but it was too late. Charlie set into me about being so pig headed and stormed off to her room before I could defend myself. She caught me off guard. I thought I had seen everything she had to throw at me to surprise me, but I didn't see that one coming."

"Ty, please, sit at the table with me and let's talk about this before it goes any farther," his friend said and pulled out two chairs.

Ty sighed and knew he had just as well give in to her request, then went along by offering some more of his insight, "Charlie has felt weak since she got back home today. Yesterday's ride took a lot out of her. She denied it when I asked her, but I am sure she took something to make it look like she felt better than she did and now she is paying for it. That is probably why she is so wound up, and that's why I am here, Lou. She is not in any condition for crazy ideas upsetting her like this. Where did all of this come from?"

One of his oldest and most trustworthy friends, Lou did not take Ty's concerns lightly and told him everything he needed to know, "It all began when Margie and Charlie were talking one day about what would become of Sammy after she passes. The result of their conversation is Charlie's way of thinking she could make some things right again for someone she loves and to protect her daughter's best interest at the same time. She told Margie that she felt like Amy is the one you were meant to be with if she can't be the one to stay here and finish what the two of you have started, that she believes you still love Amy and that Amy loves you too, even if neither of you can accept it right now, and that with a little shove in the right direction you two could find a way to get over everything that has happened and move on together."

"Lou, that's, that's…, nuts!"

"Just hear me out, please."

"Everybody keeps saying that to me today!" he said, throwing up his hands in frustration.

Lou knew his look when he really did not want to fight anymore and reached out to put her hands around his, "Some regrettable things happened between you and Amy, no one is going to say otherwise, but if you think about it, Charlie may very well be right. I agree with her in thinking you two still have feelings for each other and someday, when things settle down, if you want to get over yourselves and talk it out together, you just might be surprised. That being said, there's another thing to think about. There would be no better way to insure Sammy's welfare than the two of you working together, like you used to do. I know it sounds crazy now, but think about it, Charlie is a smart, no-nonsense woman when it comes to the people she loves, and she thinks so, too." Needing to bring home her point, "Look, Charlie isn't going to be here to watch over Sammy much longer, and somebody is going to have to do it for her. Ask yourself, Ty, if you were Charlie, what would you do?"

Lou's explanation stole a big part of his anger and the unfortunately single man asked, "Where is she? Where is Amy?"

* * *

Daylight would be fading behind the mountains within the next half hour and Amy hurried to prepare her campsite for nightfall. She placed the last armload of limbs she had gathered onto the makeshift fire pit and surveyed around her for any unfinished chores needing to be done before starting the private ceremony she had planned. Rummaging through the saddlebag that Lou had sent with her, a plastic container packed in ice with a sandwich inside caught her eye and she opened it as a well-earned reward for surviving the past few days intact.

Tired from back to back days of riding and hurrying to set up camp, Amy sat on a blanket and rested against Spartan's saddle which lay on the ground between the circle of rocks on the gravel bar surrounding the rather large pile of wood and the well placed tent a safe distance up the riverbank. The experienced camper breathed in the fresh air and relaxed as she finished off the sandwich and listened to the river pass by. She appreciated being all the way out here in the woods away from outside interference, refreshing and necessary if she was ever going to restore her sanity and make a new start in her lifelong home.

Amy sat quietly for half a minute as she studied the pile of wood remembering the reason she wanted to come out to this secluded place alone. She reaffirmed to herself that tonight would be a new beginning, closing a chapter of her life she wished had never been written. From this day forward she would start rebuilding the broken woman she had become into the best person she could make herself into, one day at a time, no matter how long it took.

Reaching for the saddlebag, Amy ran her hand inside to find what she was looking for, pinched her lips tightly as she got up and walked beside the waist high pile of wood, and stood to ponder a few seconds more before sliding the outer shell of the box open to pick out one of the matches. The resolute woman started the ceremony by brushing the red tip along the rough side and watched it spark to life, holding it in her fingers until flame reduced to a steady burn, slowly bending down to tempt the kindling at the bottom of the stack. A tiny blaze took hold of the smaller pieces and in a matter of minutes spread into a consuming bonfire that sent embers dancing through the air as she backed away from the intensifying heat. Lost into ruminations of a turbulent year, the reinvigorated woman again sat on the blanket to settle into Spartan's saddle and urged the fire on to do its work.

After an hour of controlled rage, the fire and its master calmed into a more harmonious, peaceful temperament in consuming the chilled mountain air and relinquishing their rage into spent release from their anger. Having found the stick she had sharpened the day before, Amy opened a fresh bag of marshmallows and lazily roasted a few one at a time for a pre-bedtime treat.

As she stretched out to relax in the warm glow of the fire, the camper's serenity was shaken when her senses triggered an alarm at the faint, steady pulse of approaching hoof beats nearing her location. ' _Why would anyone else be out here this time of the evening?'_ she thought. Being alone after dark and so far away from the reassurance of help if she needed it, there was no denying the sudden fear of the unknown closing in from behind her.

Scrambling for her saddlebag, the wary cowgirl pulled out the new Glock 19 and fumbled the unfamiliar shape in her hand. Amy had gone shopping at the sporting goods store in Hudson on her first day back home because of not being able to let go of the fear of Ahmed sending one or two of his goons in revenge for his new political status. She had always seen them in numbers, at least two at a time, so the Glock won the job because it held 15 9mm rounds in the magazine, enough to keep more than one man fearing for his life if she thought she was in danger and needed to defend herself. Intending to do some target practice with the weapon while she was safely away from the kids and livestock, she still had not found the time to fire it after that first day at the shooting range.

The sound was definitely growing closer. They would know where her campsite was and she knew she was totally exposed by the light of the fire. Amy crawled through the tall grass on her knees and elbows twenty feet behind the tent to a fallen tree and crouched behind it, nervously checking the pistol and trying to remember if she had loaded it before she left the barn. As she listened to the unknown threat approaching her position, Amy's heart pounded in her chest as visions of trained attackers dismounting to try and flank her position in a life or death fight to the finish flashed through her mind. Trembling hands held the weapon high and she knew she could not hold off much longer because the intruders were sure to be in the campsite in a matter of seconds. Her hands lowered the weapon to find its target, her straightened finger still alongside the protective hoop until she could not wait any longer and curled it across the trigger, pulling lightly against the slack. Holding her breath, Amy leaned forward on the log, one heartbeat away from unleashing all hell breaking loose.

 _To be continued_


	41. Chapter 41

CHAPTER 41

Amy labored to control her hold on the grip, tightening to the point of no return with the thin flesh of a shaking finger compressed to the bone against the cold steel trigger as threatening hoof beats drew nearer. Her heart jumped out of her chest as the campfire's yellow glow exposed a dark outline of a figure on horseback, drawing the gun down to set the target square in her sights before deciding at the last possible second to yell out a warning, "Stop! Who is out there?"

"Amy? Hold up! Shit! Woah! It's me!"

Beside herself in panic, Amy dropped the pistol in the grass at recognizing his voice and used both trembling hands to capture the scream caught somewhere in her throat, shaking and too petrified to respond.

Shocked at the sight of his well-armed ex, Ty shakily dismounted his horse and stared at the silhouette of the woman that had come within a whisker of punching his ticket back to the promised land, "Geez, since when did you start packing?"

"I-I thought you were…." Fear redirected itself and spilled out as anger when she began to think of what had very nearly happened, "What are you doing all the way out here after dark?" she demanded, her mind and body reeling with adrenaline at narrowly avoiding the most tragic mistake she could think of. "Do you realize how close I came to…? How did you find me?" already sure of the answer before she asked.

"We have some things to talk about, Amy. It couldn't wait so I just knew I had to take the chance that this is where you had decided to come to."

"Why? Has something happened? Is Sammy OK, or Charlie…?"

"Sammy is fine. Charlie, not so much. The ride got the best of her, along with all the other things she has on her mind."

Relieved that there was no more tragically bad news to bear, "I'm sorry to hear that. I thought she did great on the ride. I couldn't tell that she overdid it."

"It's nothing you did," holding up his hands to steer away any guilt she might bring upon herself. "She took some damn pills sometime yesterday morning to help with the pain without telling any of us she did it. She wanted to make sure she could keep up with everybody else. Today it's wearing off, and now its payback time."

"So, why are you here, then? Shouldn't you be there to take care of her? What is so important that it couldn't wait?"

"I will get to that later. Amy, why are you carrying a pistol? What are you so afraid of? You have probably camped out here by yourself a hundred times without a weapon."

"I know, it's just that things are different now. I have learned that I took too many things for granted before, and now I need to protect myself."

"From what? You said you thought I was someone else. Who did you think it could have been that made you ready to draw down on them?"

"It's nothing for you to worry about, just let it go!"

"Like hell, I will!"

Amy slumped against the log and hid her face as she began to sob into her hands.

Knowing there must be much more to this story, Ty carefully approached the rattled woman but stopped an arm's length away for fear of making her more skittish than she already was. He bent over to retrieve the weapon, removed the clip and ejected the round that might have torn him in half, and then put all the pieces safely in his pocket, "C'mon, Amy. You need to talk to me. What is going on?"

"There is nothing you can do. There is nothing _anyone_ can do!"

"That is not true and you know it."

Her hands reached out in frustration, her face distorted in a precipitous purge of stored up anger, "Do I?"

Amy started to turn away but Ty gently touched her arm to make her look at him, "I need to know what is wrong, Amy. Things haven't gotten so bad between us that I am going to let something like this go without a better explanation than that."

"It's not your problem! Just leave me alone!"

"If you are this afraid of something, or someone, it _is_ my problem. I am not going anywhere. Tell me the truth, is it Ahmed?"

A defiant glare was her answer until she bowed her head to look away. Those piercing green eyes of his used to be the biggest danger she faced when Ty would use them to make her defenseless if he really wanted something from her. A broken spirit battled to support her shaky composure, "Why do you care? I screwed you over so you have every right to take satisfaction with the way things turned out," Amy challenging him, her forehead drawn into lines of frustration, "Look at me! Look at what I have become! You must really enjoy seeing me like this!" she scoffed.

He tested his ex by coming another step closer, carefully placing his hands around her arms before he spoke, "No, Amy, I have never taken any satisfaction from seeing you afraid or hurt by anything. I could never enjoy seeing you like this. I want to help, if you will let me."

Somehow it felt to her like another personal defeat if she were to give in to his request, but after daring to let those penetrating green eyes reach out to her again, Amy's knees weakened just like they always did when he looked at her that way. She melted into his arms, her face buried into his chest to hide the embarrassment over having to admit to him that she was anything close to being OK, and wept.

Taking advantage of the calming hush of the river, Ty held his unraveling first love in the glow of the blazing bonfire until her tears went dry. He could feel her fists gathering the back of his shirt begin to relax as the urgency subsided. Knowing very well the comfort she had always taken from soothing circles brushed across her back with loving hands, he gave his former lover all the time she needed before braving to try bringing up a lighter tone to the conversation, "See, better already," he said, a tried and true distraction to see if he might coax a smile from the horsey girl that taught him how to love deeply enough to once ask her to marry him.

"I'm sorry. I am nothing but a big mess," she said, using the back of her hands to swipe at the trail of tears left from her emotional meltdown. "This is my problem. I am going to have to deal with it myself."

"I think you may have forgotten that you have a lot of people to back you up when you need help. You shouldn't go through whatever has you so upset without them."

"They all think I am a failure too, and who could blame them? I know it myself."

"If you think I am going to listen to you run yourself down like this, you have another thing coming," he said with a show of determination. "You need to remember who you are talking to! I have seen what you can do with horses, and with people. Anyone who ever knew you and watched you work with a horse that everyone else had long since given up on knows what you are made of. You have a rare and amazing gift, Amy Fleming. Don't let a setback in your life take that away."

Seeing that the she was laboring to keep steady, Ty put his hand at the small of Amy's back and guided her beside Spartan's saddle, watching her rest against it as her reddened eyes seemed thankful while following him to his seat on the edge of the blanket.

"I am nothing but a big screw up," she went on. "I just _had_ to go and try to be something I'm not and it cost me everything that really mattered. I always wondered if I had what it took to compete with the best trainers out there, and now I know."

"You seem to have forgotten that you kicked butt right from the start, after you took over the team, and maybe you have forgotten that Emir went from having one foot in the meat truck to being an international star after you worked with him, even after he hurt you. Nobody is going to do something like that without some cred of their own. You were doing just fine until…,"

Amy picked up where her impromptu cheerleader fell off, "Until I did the most stupid thing anyone has ever done and let my fear of failure and my ego take over. I put my trust in the wrong place, I know that now. It's all my fault. Nobody else but me can take the credit for screwing up a pretty good life by betting it all on a dream that turned out to be nothing more than a damn lie."

"So, what went wrong? I thought you were all set with nothing in your way to slow you down. You had Ahmed in the palm of your hand, from what I could tell."

"Maybe it seemed like that, but I underestimated him so badly that I let him find a way to break us up. I didn't think anything or anyone could do that, but he proved me wrong. He knew how to lead me into my own mistakes and let me hang myself with my own pride. He always made himself out to be the hero," the bitterness rose in her voice again. "How could I not see him for what he really was?"

"You still haven't told me what you are so afraid of. Charlie told me a little bit of what you said to her, and Lou gave me a lecture before I came out here tonight. He must have really hurt you. I am sorry, Amy. I know how much of yourself you put into the tour and what it meant to you."

"What it meant to me was that I thought if I could prove myself and show everybody what I could do, that you and I would be able to start our business like we always talked about. That is why I wanted to go on the tour. For us! I didn't count on Ahmed wanting to come between us. He seemed so supportive, at first. But now, when I look back and try to remember how things happened, I can see that he was playing me all along. It all started the day he gave me the 'Miracle Girl' saddle. That is when he started to try to come between us. I know it is."

"Sooo, I guess that explains the saddle in the fire over there. It was an expensive saddle," he said as he marveled at the royal gift shriveling into an unrecognizable lump of refuse from the intense heat.

"Expensive isn't the word I would use. To me, that damn saddle represents the start of the worst time in my life. I could never look at it again and not feel like it is a monument to all the things that brought out the worst in me and caused me to lose everything I cared about. I managed to throw away a good life with someone I loved very much."

"Do you still believe that either of us was ready to be married, to anybody? I have thought about it a lot, Amy. If we would have gotten married like we had planned, I think we would have been sorry we went ahead and did it after a while."

"So, you mean in looking back that you don't think you loved me as much as you thought you did?"

"That is _not_ what I am saying. I loved you with everything I had in me, but after everything we went through you would think that we would have learned how to let go of the things we tried to hide from each other."

"I think I know what you mean. Even though we were supposed to be a couple, we both had a little part of us that we kept to ourselves. Why do you think we did that?"

"I think it was because we still needed to protect ourselves from the feeling like we didn't deserve to be happy, like we are marked in life and bad things are supposed to happen to us."

Amy sat and thought how foolish it would be to ruin a good relationship over something so ridiculous, but could not think of a reason to argue against his logic. "Do you think it's something you can ever outgrow, the feeling that something bad is always just around the corner and all the things we care about in life are going to be taken away from us?"

"I think, if either of us is ever going to learn how to be happy, we have no choice."

A few minutes passed by leaving the two of them to ponder the first meaningful conversation they had shared in almost a year, then Amy spoke up and reminded him, "You never did tell me why you came all the way out here to find me in the dark."

Ty snapped back to the purpose for his too late to turn back trail ride and answered, "Charlie told me all about her big presentation she made to you. First, let me say that I am sorry about that. I don't know where that came from," he apologized.

"Ty, she is only trying to do what she thinks will be best for Sammy, that's all."

"I know that's what she thinks, but…."

"Yes, it _is_ what she thinks, so cut her some slack, OK? Charlie is doing everything she can to make sure there will always be a way for her daughter to remember how important she was to her. Now that she has done most of what she can do in that respect, she is thinking about what is ahead for her family in the next few months and wants to do whatever she can to see that Sammy will be taken care of by someone she trusts and that her grandparents are not left to try and do more than they are physically able to handle in taking care of a small child at their age."

Letting out a breath to calm himself, Ty said, "I guess you are right, but I wish she would have clued me in to what she was going to say to you about suggesting that we get back together so we can take care of Sammy. She was completely out of line to ask something like that of you."

"Why would you think that?" an edge of sharpness to her question. "Do you think so little of me, that I would not be capable of doing my part in taking on that kind of responsibility under these circumstances?"

"Maybe I could have used a better choice of words, but what I meant was that it is way too much to ask of anyone who has only known her for a day. Believe me, I know how pushy Charlie can be sometimes. She has never been shy when it comes to expecting people to see things her way. That is actually why I am here, to be honest. When she dropped the idea of you and I getting back together on me this afternoon, I told her I thought it was a crazy idea and completely unrealistic to ask it of you, or of me. I told her that I would do everything in my power to take care of Sammy, but she had no business in asking you to get involved. That is about the time she threw me out of the house and said some pretty hurtful things as I was leaving."

"She is just scared, Ty. Imagine what it would be like to have a beautiful little girl that you loved more than anything in this world and you found out that you were going to be taken away in the prime of your life and have to leave her behind for somebody else to take care of. It breaks my heart to think about her having to go through something like that." Amy twitched a shoulder and said, "She caught me completely off guard. I suppose she told you that I said I didn't think you would forgive me enough to make it possible."

"She did, and that should have been the end of it, given that it was started in the first place."

The tension had leveled into a more civil tone and Amy's lips twisted into an amused grin, "We can thank the Hudson Mafia for their part in all of this. My sister and Lisa have been involved with Margie right from the beginning."

"Yeah, I am just now finding out about those three wanting to help Charlie out. I was really pissed off at first, but I know in my heart that they all have good intentions and will end up supporting whatever is best for her and Sammy. They have all become my real family, no matter whose blood is flowing through our veins. I sometimes forget what they have all done for me."

"I know what you mean. After Mom died, Grandpa, Dad, the kids, and the Mafia are all I have left of my family now that we aren't together anymore."

Noticing that Ty straightened up in wondering where her comment had come from, Amy added, "Don't worry, I just meant that one of the last things Mom did for me while she was alive was to arrange to bring you here to Heartland, and after all that we have been thorough together, I considered you part of my family, too. You showed me what it feels like to have someone besides immediate family to really love me and mean it. Who knew all the things that would set in motion, eh?"

After giving the noticeably guarded man a few seconds to calm back down, she cautiously resumed, "But I ruined that, didn't I? I knew you didn't believe me when I tried to explain what happened with Ahmed before I came back, that I had been faithful to you, and I don't blame you considering the package he sent. Ahmed sent that package to you, or actually had one of his security people do it for him, hoping to break us up. I guess it worked." Amy paused to measure her ex's volatility, wanting to make the most of a chance to square up the questions she had not been given the opportunity to answer before.

Ty looked up to the stars popping out from the darkness, fighting to conceal his torment, and then gave Amy a blank stare trying quench the ticking bomb in his gut caused by the mere mention of the prince, and asked, "Charlie told me about your telling her the whole story with everything that happened after you went back to Europe, at least what you can remember of it. Is it true, the way you said it happened?" making a point to look her in the eye knowing she would not be able to lie to him now that they were actually face to face.

"It's true, but I should have known better than to let things go as far as I did. Ahmed used my missing you so much against me, against both of us, and it worked well enough to ruin everything we had going for us, just like he wanted. It's my fault that he even had the chance to try."

Realizing her opportunity for a peaceful resolution was short-lived, Amy decided that more honesty was expected, and deserved, "Everyone on the team was tense from the pressure of the schedule Ahmed had made for us. The constant pressure to prove ourselves had led to many of the team members jumping down each other's throats on a daily basis and the horses were suffering because of it too, so I suggested some time off to let everyone cool down a little. Ahmed agreed and decided to have a party at his villa in France. Everyone involved with the team was invited and as it turned out, I was the only single one there while everyone else had dates. I was leaning on a wall around this big fire pit in his garden talking to some of the people on the team that I had grown to like. I was drinking the wine his house staff kept passing around because I thought it might help me to fit in better with the others. I ended up mostly thinking of how lonely I was and realizing how desperately I missed being loved. I watched the others laughing and dancing and having a good time but all I wanted right then was to be back at the trailer beside that fire pit you built and feel you holding me like you used to do. It wouldn't have mattered if we were talking about anything in particular, just being with you would have been all I cared about."

She sneaked a glance his way to make sure she had not already been shut out, but to her surprise he looked right back at her, tight lipped, but still willing to listen, "Everyone else had left me there by myself and gone off to dance and enjoy the party. I am sure I wasn't much fun considering the mood I was in. Ahmed noticed me brooding around, drinking wine alone and getting tipsy by the fire. He offered to take me to a secret place above the river on his property and as we walked down the path through the woods he kept my glass full and consoled me while we talked. The path ended up in a cave underneath a waterfall. It was amazing how beautiful it was," stopping to see that Ty had not tuned her out. He was facing toward the bonfire with his fingers tightly woven together trying to control his emotion, so she took a slow inhale to help with baring her soul of the most discreditable part of the incident. When she felt sure the tortured listener was not going to get up and bolt from the uncomfortable confession, she continued, "I guess he was able to tell how lonely I was and knew how to take advantage of my not being a very good drinker because he kept putting pressure on me to go further than I wanted to go with him. He pushed me against a big rock and kissed me, and then he picked me up and sat me on it. I was too tipsy to make a big deal out of it and he started kissing me again and getting more aggressive at trying to make me go along with what he wanted. I was so confused, Ty. I wanted to be loved so badly, but I told him to stop, and he did for a while. Before I even realized what he had done, out of nowhere he unbuttoned my jeans and grabbed the sides of my underwear and yanked them apart. I couldn't believe he would actually try to pull something like that! That is when I knew I had to say no to him before we went too far to stop."

Amy paused to see how severely her confession was being received. Ty lifted his conflicted gaze to her, started to say something, but withdrew again, choosing not to speak.

"I think he tore my underwear knowing I would throw them away so he could have one of his security people sneak in and take them out of my room the next day. They never came off me until I threw them in the trash after I got back to my room. That is the truth."

Bracing for a response, her breath caught in her throat as Ty finally leveled his eyes on her and asked, "How far is too far, Amy? How far did you have to go with him that he had the chance to rip your underwear? Huh? Far enough for you to know that you wanted him?" his voice was shaky and strained with the rage he had been holding back.

"Too far…, way too far, Ty!" Her eyes were fixated on his, needing him to believe she was telling the truth even if it was too late to repair their brokenness. "I was tempted, I can't lie to you about that. The place was like something out of a fairy tale and Ahmed knew how to say all the right things, and I was missing being loved so much that when I started drinking his wine, and you know how I can't handle alcohol very well, he started trying things, pushing me a little farther, a little at a time, and before I knew it he had me going as far as I did. I didn't take him all that seriously until he snapped my underwear. That is when I came to my senses and stopped him, Ty. I swear, that's the truth! I left him standing there in the cave. He caught up with me after I had almost made it all the way back to the house, but I kept walking straight to my room and locked the door behind me. I want you to know that when I went to bed that night, it was you I was thinking about, not him. That was when I knew I was kidding myself about fitting into his world. I didn't want to be a part of it or any other world without you. His world is a place where people use each other to their own means and nothing matters but success and money and the thrill of conquering the newest challenge…, or person. I knew I needed more than that to be happy and I wanted more than ever to be back home with you. That's why I came back to see you and fix things between us, but it was already too late. When I saw you with that box and the way what was inside it had hurt you I knew there was nothing I could say that you would ever believe again. I didn't know what else I could do, so I just gave up."

Visions of his fiancé being tempted by the rich womanizer who managed to steal her away from him cheapened everything they had stood for as a couple in his mind and would always haunt him no matter how detailed the explanation. The image of Amy being intimate with Ahmed was permanently etched in his brain. "You were with him in his bed, either before or after, it doesn't matter to me now. I can't pretend it doesn't make me sick to my stomach when I think about it! We aren't even the same people any more, you _or_ me! Nothing is like it was and never will be again, it just can't!"

Amy stood with resolve and took a step toward the man she knew she still loved, "Ty, I am not asking for you to pretend that things didn't fall apart for both of us. Do you think I am not affected by the thought of you and Charlie being together like we both know you were? How do you think I feel knowing I let another woman take away the one man that knows me better than anyone else ever has! _Look at me!_ Look at what I have become! I don't even _look_ like the girl that left here, I don't _feel_ like the girl that left here, and I don't ever want to be like that again, because I _hate_ her!" she cried out, doubling at the waist as she shouted again, " _I hate her!_ "

Shocked out of his vengeful mood by Amy's agony, Ty knew she meant what she had said and that the conversation could not end like this because there was too much riding on it for everyone involved, "OK, let's both calm down," taking a breath and desperately searching for the inner strength Margie McCrary had shown him with how to step up in a bad situation and wrestle with a problem until she found a way to defeat it. "We let our lives get away from us. Both of us. You were shaken up by the way I gambled my life savings on that horse, Charger, without telling you. That caused you to question who I really was, and given my family history, what else could you think other than how I was going to turn out just like my dad and ruin any chance we had at getting ahead because of taking such foolish risks."

"I never believed you would turn out like your dad! You are nothing like him!"

"Maybe, but let's be honest, Amy, what would have happened if I had said no when you asked me to go on that tour with Ahmed? Huh? Would you have gone or would you have stayed and held it against me until you got fed up with resentment one day and left anyway?"

"I would never have resented you! I loved you too much to ever let that happen!" she argued.

"I suppose we will never know for sure, but as it turned out, neither of us were ready to get married, not to each other or to anyone else," he alleged. "We weren't in that kind of place where we were ready to let go of our independence yet. We were just too young, stubborn, and naive to know it."

Thankful that he chose to stand and face the problem between them instead of storming away like he usually did before, Amy sensed a possibility to salvage something, anything she could from their relationship, and gave it everything she had as she continued, "Ty, having you come into my life is the best thing that has ever happened to me," she was struggling, gulping breaths between trying to wring every last teardrop out of her body. "I took you for granted. You were always there for me and I always knew you would be when I needed you to be. I admit I enjoyed the attention Ahmed gave to me and the way he brought in all the attention I got from the bigshot trainers and breeders. I realize now that he had every intention of breaking us up and I am the one that let him do it. I let those things get in the way of what is the most important thing of all, taking care of the ones who love you and showing them how much they mean to you. I don't think I will ever know that feeling again, Ty, not like it was with us. I know we can never go back to the way things were, but I need you to at least know that I told you the truth. I let all of the crazy things happening so fast in my life get in the way of what was most important. It kept me from telling you how much I really did love you before it was too late."

All Amy could do now, after exposing her darkest secrets and offering her bared soul to him as her humble apology, was to simply wait and see what he chose to do with it. "I would give anything if I could find a way to make you willing to give me a chance to prove that what I am telling you is the truth, Ty. I don't know what that could even be right now, but I will keep on trying because I don't want to lose having you in my life, even if it means we can't be together anymore. I have been all around the world and met some of the most influential people out there, but I have never met anyone else like you. You may not be perfect, I doubt there is such a person, but you have the truest heart I know, and I want more than anything to show you that I am not going to take you for granted anymore, even if it is only as a friend."

She prayed she had gotten through to him, hopeful that his steady gaze meant that he was at least thinking about what she said instead of flatly rejecting her explanation and that being that.

"Amy, we have both changed so much that we aren't even the same people we were before. I don't see how we can try to base anything between us on who we used to be. Those people are long gone," Ty spoke matter of factly, fixing his green tinted sincerity directly upon her misty blue hope. "It's almost like we are complete strangers."

Another few seconds passed as she dove into the dare Charlie had given her to find the courage to try one last plea for a reprieve, if it came to that. Overcome with sudden abandon, Amy closed the distance between them, straightened her posture, and held her determined gaze as she extended her right hand, "Hello, I am Amy Fleming. I am a horse whisperer and kids riding coach. And you are?"

Ty awkwardly stuck out his hand to receive Amy's truce. He wore his confusion openly as his emboldened campmate seemed to enjoy his reaction and pushed her dare even farther, "Have you forgotten your manners? You still haven't introduced yourself."

The physical connection immediately shattered the protective walls the couple had built for self-preservation and neither of them could cover up the way the moment affected them. Without warning, Ty reached up to tug the bow on Amy's scarf loose and let it fall into his hand. The unexpected exposure startled her, the terror clear in her expression as she gasped and lunged with one hand to grab the garment away and used the other to cover her horrifically bared scalp. When she had managed to get her hand around the rumpled cloth, Ty surprised her again by capturing her hand in his and whispered close to her ear, "Stop hiding under this scarf. It takes more than a few curls to define true beauty. You are beautiful just the way you are."

His daring assertion came out of nowhere and caused her to freeze in place as she tried to balance dreams with reality, wishing for all she was worth that he had actually touched her again with passion. Her lips parted in disbelief when the shadowy figure dared to lean slowly forward, inching toward her ever so carefully to allow an escape if she needed it, feeling more naked than that first night in the loft when she surrendered her childhood and became a woman. When she moved into him, Ty covered her lips with a kiss charged with the power to steal several beats of her heart until she recovered enough to fervently clutch her fingers into the hair on the back of his neck.

Without hesitation, Ty lifted his hands and followed the shape around her exposed skin at her forehead with his fingers, feathering through the soft tightly curled beginnings of golden locks that she felt she needed to regain her identity. The tingling trails left behind by his touch seemed connected to one another and tied to some mysterious place deep inside her spine, lifting her weightless and floating above her helpless body.

The kiss lingered long enough that Amy lost her balance and began to wilt in his arms until he quickly captured her waist for support. They stood face to face, close enough to breathe the other's breath, their eyes fixated in both passion and fear, neither wanting to separate from the moment.

"What are we doing, Amy? I can't do this."

"Don't let go, Ty!" she pleaded, "Please! Don't let go!" fearing she may never be this close to him again.

"I can't help but feel like I am betraying Charlie at the worst possible time. She needs me, and I promised to do everything I know how to do to take care of her as long as I can."

With the emotional wave that had lifted her so high slowly receding, Amy validated his commitment to the one who helped him rebuild his life after she had carelessly torn it apart, "And that is exactly what you will do." Her palms caressed his face as she struggled with her conscience, "I love you, Ty. No matter what happens from here on, I want you to know that I love you, and I always will. This is one of the reasons I love you so much. Even though I have only known Charlie for a short time, I admire her for her courage and the way she was there for you when you needed her. I feel the same way, like I am betraying her as a friend. I want you to keep your promise and see that she is has what she needs, as long as you can."

"There is more that I need to tell you about why Charlie threw me out of the house and said those things to me," the bewildered man confessed.

Amy jumped in to finish for him, "That she asked you to get married and that you apparently gave the wrong answer?"

"How did you…? The Mafia!"

"You got it! Lou told me Charlie was going to ask you herself if I didn't go along with her plan. Don't be mad at her, Ty. Remember what she is going through. Now that all of this is out in the open and we all know where everybody stands, we can figure this out, together."

"I am so confused that I don't know which way is up. I feel like I have just cheated on my dying girlfriend with the woman I was supposed to be married to by now, and the reason I am even here in the first place is because when she asked me to come and talk to you she threw me out of her house after I said I couldn't do it. I am starting to think those reality shows you see on TV are real. Nobody would believe this crazy stuff could really happen if you told them!"

"Well, it is what it is," Amy reckoned, "and from this moment on, I want you to do what you have to do to take care of Charlie and Sammy. I promise to support whatever you chose to do, I won't stand in your way. I love you, Ty Borden, and I owe you that much. I would rather deal with that instead of knowing I had a part in causing Sammy to be taken away after Charlie is gone and put into a stranger's care."

"What about now? What are we going to do about tonight?"

"For tonight, I am asking you to stay here and make me feel safe, since you managed to scare the living shit out of me earlier, and as long as you don't try to get past second base, you can stay in the tent and keep me warm."

 _To be continued_


	42. Chapter 42

CHAPTER 42

Daybreak tugged at the protective cover of darkness as first light began to filter through the fabric of Amy's well used tent. Her first sensation of the new day was of the cool mountain air being drawn into her nostrils and a comforting warmth from a body pressed tightly around her spooned shape. Her sleepy paradise was jarred by a realization that she was not alone as she had planned, and a hundred questions exploded inside her head as to how she had come to be together in her tent with the man who was to have been her husband had it not been for her world turning upside down and crushing her expectations of married bliss.

Ty's arm draped around her torso with an occasional squeeze from a dreaming hand innocuously planted across her lower breast from outside her shirt. He always did that, capturing her oblivious to the world around them while he slept like a log dreaming about who knows what, hardly anything threatening to wake him short of the shrill beeping from his alarm clock to bring him back from wherever his dreams had taken him. She had given him that much, second base, she recalled saying, but knew as well as the sun was coming up that she would have never been able to throw him out if he went for third, or even home, if he had chosen to try.

Amy blinked away the effects of cat napping for the past seven hours, decidedly restless after the spellbinding kiss beside the campfire, unable to complete the journey to uninterrupted sleep like her bunk mate had apparently succeeded in doing. Ty was the source of an overwhelming draw upon her. He always had been. She knew very well that if he had pushed his luck things would have gone too far at the drop of a hat and that both of them would have been licking their wounds this morning, their guilt reminding them of their current stations in life and of failing the commitment they had tried to make to Charlie, Sammy, and to each other.

Being the only one yet aware of their intimate start to the new day, Amy relished being immersed in the arms of the man she still wished she could keep all to herself, warm and loving, even in his sleep. Ty's hand once again squeezed her, his fingertips caressing the soft flesh in tender circles for a few precious seconds longer before drawing the cool air deep into his chest and relaxing as it slowly escaped through his partially opened mouth. Ty's warmth and uninhibited affection enticed the awakening camper to wiggle her hips against her ex's well-toned shape even closer until the pressure against her bottom suggested that his body was coming to life in a big way of its own. A tingling stirred deep inside her gut and she knew that if she did not bring him out of his innocent imaginings immediately that he would soon wake up a very happy man.

Pulling back the covers and turning to face him, Amy quietly watched her tent mate adjust to the cool air replacing her warmth against his chest and smiled as his face contorted in displeasure from having such a perfect sleep to be disturbed. His eyes cracked slightly open, repelling the light, and wondered around the interior of the enclosure to try and figure out where the hell he was.

"Morning," Amy offered, enjoying his sleepy reorientation to alertness.

It all came back to him now, _'Holy crap!'_ he thought to himself, bewildered that at least this part of his dream was in fact a reality.

"Don't look so disgusted! Surely this is not as bad as some of the mornings you have woken up to!" she teased, trying to get off to a good natured start to the rest of their lives.

"No! It's not like that! It's just…, how the hell am I going to explain being out here alone with you and that nothing happened?"

"Well, that's not entirely true," giving a suggestive tilt to a crooked smile.

Shocked at thinking he had forgotten an unforgivable transgression sometime the previous evening, "Wha-What? Did I…,"

Amy knotted into a full belly laugh at his confusion, something she had always taken delight in when she had him going, "I don't know exactly what it was that you were doing in your sleep, but I get the feeling that it would have been something to see!"

Embarrassment was never something Ty Borden dealt with very well, and Amy had him on the run at implying he had gone past his agreed to limits. "I didn't mean to…, whatever I did…!"

"It's OK, Ty. You were a perfect gentleman, that is, if you don't consider this to be an infraction of the rules," a curious hand darted inside the sleeping bag and gave a quick squeeze at the tip of the rock hard erection straining against the front of the mortified man's jeans.

Ty leapt out of the fur lined cocoon, scrambling on his hands and knees for the safety of the great outdoors, desperate to hide his flushed face away from a mischievously amused bunk mate.

"C'mon, Ty, it's OK! There is nothing unusual about a guy waking up like that, so I hear. I consider it a compliment!" hollering through the flap covering the opening of her tent.

Knowing that humor was all that saved them that morning, Amy admitted to herself that she would not have been denied the feeling she missed so badly when Ty took her, because without the relief of a good laugh, there was no way she would have given up the hold she had on his awakening manhood until she had made him surrender to her desires. "Tell ya what…, I will make a deal with you."

The blushing camper held no bets as to what she might be thinking, holding his breath in waiting to see if he had enough integrity left in him to deny what she might propose, if he needed to, "Yeah? What did you have in mind?"

"Lou packed plenty of food for the both of us, so I will make you breakfast if you will dig me a hole!"

He had prepared himself for just about anything, but once again, the flummoxed ex fiancé had been blindsided by the unanticipated notions of his formerly betrothed, "Huh? You mean like, leave nothing behind, kind of hole or…?" thinking perhaps disposing of their personal waste being her intention.

"No, silly! I still need to do something about that damn saddle, or what's left of it! I never want it to see the light of day again!"

Somewhat relieved and beginning to tune in to her level of amusement, "You got it! Pick a spot, so I can get started, and get me some vittles a'cookin, woman!"

After finding an acceptable location far enough away from the possibility of being washed out of it's new resting place by high water, Amy pointed to a tree line of Aspens, "How about over there?"

"I take it that you brought a shovel of some sort, so I don't have to dig with my bare hands?"

"Beside the tent, in the rifle holster."

"You know, if a person were to stumble on to you out here, armed with a high powered pistol and a shovel, they might think you were up to no good!"

"Oh, I'm up to good, alright! It will be a great day to put that poor saddle where it belongs. It really was beautiful. It's just too bad that the wrong person bought it, and now it has to be disposed of."

Amy walked alongside of Ty back to the campsite enjoying a whole new start of a relationship that just seemed to fit, if they could only find a way to not keep screwing things up. Beside the tent was the holster she had mentioned, and she bent down to retrieve its contents, "Here, I bought it just for the occasion."

"Nice! OK, then. Make sure to crisp up my bacon, the way I like it, and don't make the eggs too runny, I hate when my eggs are runny…," a slight grin skewering the corners of his lips as he waited for her response.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember. Go on, get to digging!"

* * *

The smell of breakfast coming close to being ready over a much smaller campfire than the one she had previously built made Amy's stomach growl in anticipation. She looked toward the spot where she expected to see Ty laboring away at his chore, but saw only tall grass swaying lazily in the gentle morning breeze, "Ty? Where are you? Breakfast is ready!" she shouted. Her forehead gathered in concern when she heard no response, deciding she had better go check to see if something had happened to her bartered laborer, "Ty?"

Her cautious pace had quickened to a trot after the second empty request for him to answer, "Ty!" she yelled, her heart beginning to beat stronger in fear of the unknown.

"I'm down here!" his voice winded from inspired exertion. "Whaddya think?"

"I think I should kick your ass for not answering me, is what I think!"

"Sorry, I just had to catch my breath," a conspicuous glint of amusement in his eye at seeing her perplexed response to his answer.

Upon surveying the large crater he had managed to create in just a few short minutes, relief overtook her worry and she commented, "Boy! You really made some progress! Who knew you were so good at manual labor! I wouldn't let Grandpa know about this, if I were you," a threatening smile slowly widening across her face.

"Well, if he does find out, I will know where it came from," he countered with a likewise threatening grin.

"Breakfast is ready. Go wash up in the river and I will have it waiting for you, crispy bacon, overdone eggs, and all," she threw up her hands with the attitude of _'you asked for it!'_

The first meal they had shared since the calamity of their separation was almost magical, a re-bonding of something they had both believed to be broken beyond repair, and for a wonderful, carefree hour, chitchatted the time away as though things between them were as they should have been all along.

Running out of things to say that did not involve deeper commitment to navigating troubled waters, Ty suggested, "I had better get to dealing with that saddle about now if we are planning on getting back to the ranch before it gets late."

Amy nodded in agreement and said, "C'mon, I will help you. We don't want to be too late, we will have enough explaining to do as it is."

It had taken a full twenty minutes to situate the roasted lump of leather inside the tack's final resting place, and readjusting the dirt for the second time to fit his digging partner's landscaping specifications had begun to tax Ty's ability to hide his frustration at what should have been a simple task, "Amy, it's a hole! It doesn't need to turn into a science project!"

"But, I don't want a wild horse to come running through here and break a leg if he hits that bump! It needs to settle flat!" she explained, her own frustration reciprocated to the man leaning on the shovel at questioning her logic.

"For one thing, anybody who ever dug a hole knows that the dirt you take out of it will never fit back where it came from, especially if you decide you need to put something like, say, a _saddle_ in it, _so_ , what I am trying to tell you is that I will pack the dirt in as tight as I can, and that is exactly why I am leaving the top a little high, so when it _does_ settle, it will smooth out naturally!"

His tone came across as a bit patronizing, but she began to get his point, "As long as the bump lays down flatter, I suppose it's OK," her lips pouting at grudgingly having to agree to a compromise.

Amy's expression derailed Ty's aggravation, and to the surprise of both of them, he outright laughed at her well intentioned stubbornness. It took a couple of seconds for the initial hurt feelings to pass, but the infectious outbreak of cackling broke through her defensive take of the his condescending attitude and she began to laugh back at the sweating human excavator leaning on the shovel over the hole, and replied, "Well, I guess it's true, what they say."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Once a smart ass, always a smart ass!" and pitched a handful of loose dirt across his sweaty chest.

Ty's surprised face cracked her up, but when the shock wore off and his lips twisted into a tight pucker she broke into an all-out dash for the sanctuary of the tent.

He caught her from behind just after she reached the gravel bar, and Amy squealed as Ty picked her up, tossed her backwards across his shoulder, and began to walk toward the river.

"No! Ty! Don't you do it!"

Quickly closing in on the river bank, Amy's legs thrashed in front of them as she giggled uncontrollably and squirmed to try and escape her captor's relentless hold at knowing what was coming. S _plash!_ They both came up drenched in the cool water, Ty never hesitating to jump in with Amy still draped across his shoulder.

"Ty! Now look what you have done!"

"What's that? Did I mess up your hair?" he teased.

Hurt drained the smile from Amy's face and cut right through Ty's heart when he saw it. "Amy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say something that made you feel like this." He immediately swiped at the water he was treading and when he was close enough, pulled her into his arms. Without giving her a chance to respond, he added, "There you go again. You should not be so sensitive about your hair being so short." He curled a finger under the downturned chin of his onetime lover and waited for her saddened blue eyes to find his emerald determination, "Amy, short hair is only a new look, and a good one for you, too, I might add. Long, short, curly, just slept on, it doesn't matter. You are too beautiful for it to matter!

Amy never let his eyes go, the connection unbending as she reassured him, "I'm OK…, now," and further thanked him without words for being so considerate to her self-consciousness about her altered appearance. Giving up treading water to throw her arms around Ty's neck, she pulled herself up to kiss him with the kind of conviction they both had forgotten was possible between two people. The supporting swimmer had to remember that he was now responsible for keeping the two of them afloat and kicked to guide them closer to the safety of the river bank and firmer footing.

The embrace lingered on, a flashback to a time when every part of their lives seemed more certain while they were together, and when Amy finally pulled back far enough to inspect the damage she had inflicted on her former fiancé, "I should be sorry, but I'm not. I will respect the things you have to do right now, for Charlie and Sammy, and for yourself. I can't tell you how much I admire your courage for doing this for that little girl and her mother, but someday, Ty Borden, we are going to revisit this, and I am not going to give up on us until we get it right, no matter what."

All he could do was to give a subtle nod and gently cup her cheek in his palm, "I think that we should do just that, someday." His eyes told her that he wanted to say more, but he chose to divert their closeness into a lighter mood, "But since you got us all wet, now we have to get dried out the best we can and head back to the ranch. At this rate, it will be early afternoon before we can make it home. At least we will have some time to come up with a good defense for all the questions you can be sure they are going to ask."

Amy's eyes flashed in savoring the moment, "You called it home. Heartland…, you called the ranch home."

"I guess it is the only place I ever did consider to be any kind of home. Some things last no matter what happens, and your family will always be home to me."

"I'm so glad you still feel that way. I would hate to think that I took something like that away from you, too. I'm so sorry, Ty, I'm so sorry!"

His strong embrace surrounded her, forgiveness apparent in his actions, and Amy held Ty as tightly as she could for the short while she still had him for herself.

 _To be continued_


	43. Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

The two riders allowed their mounts to pace slowly through a random stand of trees scattered across a gentle hillside as the late morning sun sporadically filtered through the canopy of leaves above them. The day had passed by quickly, it seemed. The ranch house and nearby barns were visibly nestled in the picturesque valley beyond the trees meaning their unexpected retreat together would soon be coming to an end. Conversation had swapped back and forth about their work, friends, and any other casual thing they could think of to discuss, but Amy could not help but notice how distant her riding companion had become for the last half hour. As they approached one of the livestock's favorite ponds she saw Spartan's ears flutter at the prospect of a cool drink from the spring fed oasis. She let her horse wonder to the bank and have a sip of the fresh water and reached into her saddle bag for a plastic container as she enjoyed the break, offered Ty a chance to pick from the remaining selection of snacks Lou had packed for the trail ride, and tried to assess Ty's thoughtful expression while he let Harley and Buddy take their turn at the refreshing water.

"Where'd you go?"

"Huh?"

"Where did you go? You've gotten so quiet, I just wondered why?"

"I don't know. Just thinking, about things, I guess. Now that we are almost back to the ranch, I've gotta get my head screwed on straight so I can straighten a few things out today."

They sat astride their thirsty horses in quiet consideration, each of them knowing today would be another day to remember in lives taken so far off track from where they should have been had they taken the paths that had been laid out and then lost, although neither of them yet knew to what extent or result. Ty waited for Harley to raise his head, satisfied he had enjoyed his fill of the sparkling fresh water, and pulled the reins to lead his mount and pack horse back toward the trail with the remaining pair slightly behind as the big black gelding wasn't quite ready to give up his spot on the pond bank.

After spending a few minutes catching up, Amy heeled Spartan's sides to make him draw even with Ty and Harley who had assumed the lead on the trail while she studied him, taking the opportunity to make the contemplative riding partner look back at her as she spoke, "I have been trying to find a way to say that I am sorry for the way I was so mean to you this morning."

It took a couple of seconds for her insinuation to register, but when he grasped her meaning a sly smile etched across his lips, "Yeah…, well, don't worry too much about that. I guess it was too easy to get caught up in the moment with just the two of us alone and getting along again. Kinda felt like old times, you know?"

"Yes, it did. I just felt so comfortable having you with me and…, I miss having you to myself and being able to tease you that way." Amy smiled in her guilty confession, shy but determined to clear the air of any unnecessary awkwardness, "I always thought, when you got like that, so off balance and shy, that it was one of the things I loved about you most. I loved to get the best of that boy in the loft, thinking he was _sooo_ grown up and trying to be _sooo_ cool, and getting him to show me the sweet boy I fell in love with who tried to it cover up from everyone who didn't know him. It made me feel special, like I was the only one who could do that to the guy who wanted to be so tough." Watching the troubled old friend soften at her admission, the woman who Ty once thought of as the beautiful horsey girl that loved to boss him around added, "Can I help? You know, with things?"

Looking down at Harley, whose ears twitched in tranquil duty to carry his rider back to his home at Heartland, Ty tried to form the thoughts that had smothered his part of the conversation into comprehensible words, "I have something I need to say to you, Amy," his manner emphasizing the importance of what he was about to share.

Worried at his gesture and its source of emotion, the anxious cowgirl braced herself for whatever fate was about to hand her, "Sure! Go ahead. What's on your mind?" determined to present herself as being confident and supportive.

Ty settled into his saddle and looked squarely into her eyes, the hesitation obvious as he tried to get the words to come, "I need to tell you that I have made a decision about what I need to do."

"Okaaay, Good! Tell me!" she forced a smile, trying to help him to move on with the revelation.

"I am going to tell Charlie that I think she and I should get married, as soon as possible."

"I know." There was no way for Amy to fully conceal the effect her former fiancé's words had impacted upon her. "I figured you would need to address what happened between you two pretty soon." She had expected that it could come to this, but hearing the words from his own lips poured over her like molasses, heavy and pulling her down under the merciless weight of truth. Taking an extra couple of breaths to make sure she could finish what she needed to tell him, "If you know in your heart that raising Sammy is what you want to do, _need_ to do, then I agree. I've always known you would make a great dad and Sammy is one very lucky little girl to have someone like you to take care of her. So is Charlie. She needs you now, more than ever. No one else can make her last days more meaningful, and I can't imagine how much better she will feel knowing her daughter is going to be so well cared for by someone she trusts. But, Ty, don't ever think that you will have to do this alone. We will all be here for you, when you need us. And I mean me, too, especially _me_ , because if there is one thing I want you to take away from this past couple of days, it's that I love you, no matter what. I love you enough to let you go and make your life complete, the best way you can. I want you to be happy, Ty. I hope you believe me when I say it, because I have never said anything more truthful than that."

Ty believed her. The conviction and honesty from the first girl to steal his heart rang true to his ears and although he knew she had been capable of trying to conceal part of her heart from him in the past, there was no misunderstanding about her feelings now. "It means a lot to me to hear you say that, Amy. I don't think I could do it alone, because I have no idea how to be a dad. As much as I have thought about how I would handle all of the little things, and _big_ things that will surely come up if I am the one responsible for raising her, I have no idea what to do when I have to make decisions like a parent."

"Trust your heart and you will be OK. You are a good and decent man, Ty. You know the difference between right and wrong. Just show Sammy where her boundaries are and give her the attention and love I know you have in you to give, and everything will be fine. Besides, you have to remember that you have all the resources of the Hudson Mafia behind you! Do you think for a minute that they will let you have too much peace and quiet without offering to help, whether you need it or not?"

"Hadn't thought of that," he chuckled. "Tell me again how that is a good thing?"

"Well, I can see Lisa's SUV in the driveway. That means she and Lou are preparing for our arrival, so get yourself ready for the inquisition!"

"What are we going to tell them? What am I going to tell Charlie? They are never going to believe the truth. Who would?"

"What? That we spent the night out in the woods together and the most trouble we got into was destroying the most expensive saddle either of us has ever seen and digging a hole big enough to bury what was left of it?"

* * *

"There you are!" Lisa greeted the riders as they dismounted their horses at the hitching post beside the barn. "We have been worried about you! It is so unsettling not to be able to call you out there where there is no phone service. _Anything_ could happen!"

Jack had gotten behind with his wife's haste to leave the house, but he arrived in time to offer the best relief he could think of, "C'mon, Lis! Let them at least get their horses taken care of before you start in on them!"

"What? I am just happy to see them in one piece!"

Amy was the first to speak up, "We are fine, Lisa. Give us a few minutes to get these guys put away, and if you would send Georgie out to brush them down and get their stalls set up for the night, we will be in shortly to fill you in on everything that happened. Besides, Ty has some big news he would like to share with everybody!" the timid smile not fooling either Lisa or her grandfather who then took his younger wife by the elbow and led her back toward the ranch house, the torture of questions spinning around inside her head being put off clearly showing across her face.

Waiting until the older couple had gotten out of earshot, "That went well!" Ty sarcastically laughed under his breath.

"That isn't even the start of it," Amy warned. "Wait until Lou is right there beside her." Experienced in matters of her personal life being brought up in over-protective family interventions as of late, the cowgirl shrugged at the idea and said, "Let's get these guys ready so Georgie can take over settling them down for the night, then we can go in and get all those crazy ideas put to rest. Would you get their harnesses out of the barn for me?" She patted each of the three horses on the neck when she removed their saddles, throwing each one on the top rail of the second hitching post, and one at a time swapped the bridles to harnesses before she and Ty led them inside the barn.

"Hey, guys! Jack said you needed me to help with the horses?" Georgie offered as she lugged one of the saddles onto its assigned place in the tack room.

Amy turned to her niece and said, "Hey, Georgie. Thanks. How about brushing our boys off and getting them settled in for the night? I would appreciate it, if you would do that for us."

Georgie scoffed and said, "Yeah, I would imagine you two are _really_ wanting to get back to the house and face the crew waiting for you in there," pointing a thumb over her shoulder toward the task at hand." The teenager squinted in amusement, "It kinda worries me that you never get old enough to outgrow having to go to the principal's office when you are bad. I was kinda hoping you two would get past that, someday, then there would be hope for me too," the grin growing across her face as the couple looked at each other, weighing the option of saddling the horses back up and riding off to parts unknown while the getting was good. "Just so you know, Margie McCrary has been calling all morning," she added. "She has been worrying about you, Ty. She said Charlie was pretty rough on you yesterday."

Ty pinched his lips as his chin dropped, wondering how to best work all the kinks out of any plans he was faced with rearranging, again. The girls knew the look, glancing at each other in knowing the dilemma their friend faced, and Georgie's childish honesty prevailed in the silence, "Just tell 'em what you want to do, Ty. It's not their lives to be making any decisions about. It's yours!"

Simple wisdom always rose to the top, if you let it, and Ty put his hand on Georgie's shoulder, "How'd you get so smart?"

"I've always been smart! It's just that nobody takes me seriously 'cause I am just a kid, remember?"

"Well, they should," he told her and gave her a brotherly shake with his hand before he removed it. "Let's get this over with," giving his hesitant ally a nod toward the ominous duty awaiting them in the house.

* * *

Four people were sat at the kitchen table when they came in, three waiting as though nothing unusual was in the air and offering coloring suggestions to Katie who was drawing a picture for her Aunt Amy showing a stick figure, supposedly a female rider, and a stick horse situated in a wildly fluffed green pasture when Amy led Ty through the mud room and paused long enough to take off their boots before walking into the room with them. "Hey, everybody! Whatcha doin' Katie?"

"I made this for you! Oh, wait!" The child returned to her box of Crayolas and picked out a brown one, rounded on the end from heavy use, and began adding another horse beside the one already so carefully placed in the center of her artwork, "I need to put Ty and Harley in here too!"

Everyone at the table laughed, but all of their eyes darted from the cute little artist up to the couple standing alone in the cross hairs of what was coming.

"Katie, Honey, why don't you go help Georgie with Aunt Amy's and Ty's horses. I'll bet she would like that!"

"Okay. But don't mess with my drawing! I still need to finish it so I can give it to Aunt Amy!"

"I will guard it like a watchdog," Jack reassured his giggling great granddaughter as he nipped her nose between his finger and thumb and watched the littlest ranch hand squirm out of her chair to make it into the mudroom to put on her boots and push through the front door.

"I still can't believe how much she has grown," Amy said when she turned back to face the remaining three.

"Have a seat!" Lou said to her obviously uncomfortable younger sister, "You too, Ty!" and patted the chairs on either side of her. "We can't wait to hear about your camping trip!"

"OK, just let me say that it's not what you all are thinking," Amy started, trying not to let her embarrassment diminish the calm response she was hoping to offer.

"We aren't assuming anything, Amy," Jack intervened, knowing how his youngest granddaughter hated to be in the spotlight of a judgmental family barrage of questions. "Just tell us what you think we ought to know and that is your call what to include."

Ty saw Amy's struggle in dealing with her family and stepped in to run interference, "She's right, it's not what you are thinking."

Calm and focused, Ty told them about the near miss when he unexpectedly rode into Amy's campsite, the way they talked it out between them, and about the sacrificial saddle ceremony, including the fresh hole and not to be alarmed about if any of them happened to ride out to the river and see it. He also emphasized that there was nothing more for them to confess to anyone and the rest of what he and Amy discussed was between them and if either of them felt the need to share any more of the past fifteen hours, they would let them know.

"We understand, completely," Jack offered, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, implying to the others that it was time to move on without any further dwelling on personal business between his granddaughter and the young man he loved like a son. "The main thing is, you're both OK and it looks like you have worked out some things, so that's all that's important."

"He's right," Lisa agreed. "It's your business and I am happy as well to see that you two seem to have found some common ground," offering her business like pleasantness of cooperation when she needed to impress upon others that she was content with the outcome of a negotiation. "Amy, you mentioned that Ty has some news for us?"

Uncertain of how he wanted to proceed, Amy turned to her trail riding partner and nodded for him to go ahead with the latest details of his decision.

"I have decided to see if I can get Charlie to forgive me for being so wishy-washy when we talked yesterday. She has a way of taking me by surprise and I didn't handle her proposal very well. She's pretty mad at me right now but she will get over it as soon as she thinks things through, at least I hope she will because, like I have told Amy, I am going to ask her to marry me. I think it's the right thing to do and Charlie needs to know that she is not leaving her daughter to fate, that someone who really cares about her and her daughter is going to be there to see to it that Sammy has a good chance at growing up safe and happy."

All eyes took a rapid-fire detour toward the other half of the duo sitting on either side of Lou, and when she saw them Amy stood up and said, "Ty is right. I think it is the best decision he could make, under the circumstances. I've talked to him enough to know that he really believes in this approach and I believe it, too. He will make a great dad for Sammy and he will also make a huge difference in Charlie's life at a time when she needs someone like him the most. So, don't worry, I won't get in the way of helping him make this happen, and neither should any of you. I expect to have everyone here at this table to show Ty that we are his real family, because we all love him, too, and that we will be here for him whenever he needs our help."

Every face was in awe as they watched her, even Ty's. The embattled younger sister of the Bartlett-Fleming clan was more confident and decisive than they had seen her in a long while. They all knew how much she had been through, how much she blamed herself for all the twists and turns her life had taken, and the way her decisions had impacted the people she loved most in the world. "Go, Ty. Go to Charlie and make her see what I have seen. She needs you, and from what I can see, you need her too. Now, if you all will excuse me, I have some things I need to attend to."

Amy turned away from the table and quickly disappeared into her room. There was no mistaking how difficult the affirmation of support had been for her, but it appeared to all seated at the table that Amy Fleming had turned a corner in her life and took a certain amount of comfort in knowing she was beginning to find her way again as the strong, sensitive, and loving Alberta rancher's daughter she once was, ready to start her life over, and ready to take on whatever the coming days gave her and make the best of them.

 _To be continued_


	44. Chapter 44

CHAPTER 44

Clint slipped a finger around the edge of his wife's lacy sheer curtains in the main living room to peer once again through the front window when he thought for the third time he had heard the engine of Ty's old GMC coming up the driveway. This time his imagination was not playing tricks on him as the faded blue truck came through the gate at the edge of the yard and stopped in front of the house. He quickly shuffled into the kitchen to tell his wife, "He's here! Is Charlene still in her room?"

"She hasn't come out yet, but I heard the shower running a while ago and clothes hangers rattling around, so I'd say she's about ready. I'll go check on her while you meet Ty. Just warn him that we haven't been able to talk any sense into her yet. The girls are out in the barn with Petey so you need to keep an eye on them while Charlene and Ty talk it out. I'd better stay close enough to break things up if things get out of hand in here."

"OK, I'd say you are right. Wouldn't want to have to explain to Jack Bartlett how we let Charlie set her claws into poor ol' Ty just for tryin' to make up over a misunderstanding."

"Well, it ain't just an argument, you old fool!" she whispered sternly. "She asked him to marry her and he didn't accept," she shook her head at the mess that had caused. "Can't say that I blame him, being so sudden, and all, but she is starting to let all of this get to her now that she can feel the damn cancer starting to win out."

"What would you expect from a guy like Ty, Marg?" the old man defended the unsuspecting victim of his granddaughter's surprise proposal. "The poor guy wants to do whatever he thinks is right, you know that as well as I do, but that granddaughter of yours is the spittin' image of you in your younger days and I can sympathize with Ty for being taken off guard. Just give 'em a chance to talk things through. It will be OK, you'll see!"

"I hope you're right, old man, because I don't know if I've got what it takes to hold her back if he says something to set her off. I ain't as young as I used to be."

"Ty! Glad you're here. I sure am sorry for how things went yesterday," the old man leaned in to quietly apologize.

"It's OK Clint. I know Charlie is having a hard time of things right now and I can't hold it against her for being so stubborn." ' _Not that she wouldn't have been stubborn even in her better days_ ,' he thought.

"Just a fair warning, Charlie hasn't come out of her room since you left, but Margie says she thinks she has been getting ready for you to come back. Go easy, Ty. Try to have a little extra patience, and don't let that sharp tongue of hers get under your skin. She's scared more than anything, and if I know you as well as I think I do, you've got what it takes to make her see how unreasonable she has been about this and make her see your side of it."

"Don't worry, Clint. I have been thinking about what I need to say all morning, and I have a plan. I just hope I last long enough to make her hear me out before she tries to kick my ass out of the house again."

The old man looked worried, but Ty grinned and put his hand on the strapping old cowboy's shoulder and said, "It's not that bad, Clint. I know she is getting to the point where she knows it's time to start facing the facts. I know that even when she's talked before about being prepared for what's coming, well, she still had that little spark of hope somewhere deep down inside her, and now that she feels herself losing the fight, she isn't ready to quit just yet. She's a natural born fighter. It's not in her DNA to let something like this take her down without giving it everything she has to beat it. Not just for herself, but for Sammy, you and Margie. It took me a while to figure that out, but now I know what to say and I'm ready to see her, if she will come out to talk to me."

Clint looked Ty straight on and liked the confidence he saw, "I'm supposed to go out to the barn and keep an eye on the girls. Margie will be close by, if you need her, but I think you are the only one who can give Charlene what she needs right now. You'll be OK, son. You'll be OK." With that, the patriarch of 8S Ranch turned toward the sliding glass door and pushed it open to step out into the rose garden, then closed it behind him without looking back. Ty supposed it was the old cowboy's way of showing confidence in his ability to handle his granddaughter during this sensitive time in her life and he picked up a little bit more confidence from the gesture before he looked down the hall to a closed door he needed to open.

He took a few steps in the direction of Charlie's sanctuary as Margie came out of the family room on his way past to meet him, put a gentle hand on his heart and said everything she needed to say with kind love in her eyes. She then pulled her hand away as she stepped aside, "I have decided to go out to the flower garden, if you need me. You will do just fine, Ty. I heard what Clint said to you, and for once I agree with him," trying a timid smile to make the young man feel more at ease with what he was about to do. Before she could take another step, Ty reached out to draw the solemn woman into a warm hug and squeezed her tight in his arms, this time he was the one offering comfort to a hurting loved one. "I wouldn't mind if you said a little prayer for me, though. I don't want to screw this up."

Margie gave him a quick nod and passed him by, leaving nothing but a closed white door between him and the hardest thing he had ever had to do. Trepidation had frozen him a few seconds before he rallied for three light taps with the back of his knuckles. Failure was not an option. He would not leave Charlie to face the next phase of her life without his support and that was something he would fight for, even against Charlie herself, if necessary. Ty knew desperation was setting in and affecting her judgment more and more every day, and it was now his job to make her believe he was in it for real. ' _This has to work_ ,' he pledged to himself.

Ty was startled when the door swung open and behind it was the vision of a woman looking even more stunning than the day they had first met. He saw the satisfaction in her eyes, softening into moistening sparkles when she knew the extra time she had taken to get ready for him had accomplished its purpose.

"Whoa!" he said breathlessly, feeling like an idiot for addressing her shocking revival in such a boyish fumble of a reaction.

"Why, thank you!" she said, evidently packing her old sass and relishing the impression she had made on the dazzled veterinarian.

Still tongue-tied from the visual assault on his senses, Ty reached out to her hoping to underscore his words, "I came to ask you to forgive me for being, well, for being me, I guess. I gave you the wrong idea about what I was feeling. I made a mistake and I am sorry. Please forgive me."

Words would only get in the way of what she wanted to say to him and the remarkably revitalized woman put her palms to his smooth shaven cheeks and pulled him low enough to reach his face with her bright red lips, drawing him into a steamy kiss to assure him that her intentions were to move forward and not dwell on yesterday's mistakes, and when she felt her point had been made, pulled away to see if her gesture had been well received. His silly, blank stare made her laugh, her hands still at his cheeks, "Need I say more?" she teased, and then kissed him again.

It was hard to comprehend what his eyes were seeing, the silky white cowgirl shirt tucked neatly into her favorite dress up jeans, the toes of her fanciest boots sticking out from under the hem, but most of all, the long flowing locks of chestnut hair cut at the small of her back, just like she used to keep it.

"You've got nuthin'? After all the trouble I went to, in dressing up for you, you can't think of anything to tell me?"

Knowing that, if there were a hundred correct things he could say to her right now, and one thing that was wrong, he decided to error on the safe side of the odds by grabbing her waist and pulling her into him as tightly as he could, "Damn! You look…," deciding to punctuate his answer by drawing her chin up with a bent finger to kiss her with the same intensity as she had impressed upon him.

The kiss removed any doubts she had been second guessing and after taking a moment to let her renewed strength sink in, Charlie said, "I was afraid you wouldn't want to talk to me again after the way I treated you yesterday," she confessed. "I'm sorry, Ty. I wasn't myself. I know I was wrong, I know I hurt you…, and I know it wasn't your fault. I am the one who should be asking you to forgive me."

"Do you feel well enough to take a ride with me…, say, down to the overlook?"

"I thought you would never ask!" she smiled broadly, the sparkle dancing in her eye, just like he wanted to remember.

* * *

"Amy?" Lou tapped lightly on the door and asked again, "Amy, can I come in?"

It took a few seconds to overcome the desire to be a recluse before she answered warily, "Yeah, it's OK. C'mon in."

Lou cracked the door at first, then pushed it open enough to enter the room and close it behind her, "I just wanted to see how you are. I don't know what you and Ty talked about, exactly, but I can see that you are not OK. Wanna talk about it?"

"There isn't much to say, Lou," Amy's reply muffled under a pillow pulled around her head, the fluffy cushion tumbling to the bed as she tossed it away and rolled to her side facing an old picture of two young lovers on her nightstand, "Today I told the guy I love that he should marry someone else, that's all."

Lou's heart ached for her little sister. After everything the whole family had invested in putting up with the two teenagers trying to figure out how love works, the fighting, the making up, all the miscues of inexperienced youth and watching them grow up together as a couple, seeing the relationship she had secretly admired all those years turn to ruin was not an easy thing for her to accept either. "I think you handled yourself very well for the family, and for Ty. You know something…, of all the things I have ever seen you do for Ty to show how much you love him, that is the most giving thing I have ever seen you do. It took a lot of guts to do that. I am very proud of you," she finished by rubbing a soothing hand around Amy's back. "

The crushed woman arranged the pillow behind her back and sat up to face her older sister. "I knew it was the best way to make all of this work out. I couldn't get in his way, Lou. I owe it to him to let him do what he thinks he needs to do. I just hope he is ready for what he's getting into, that's all."

"So, you're having doubts about him wanting to take responsibility for Sammy, or is it Charlie we are talking about here?"

"No, Lou. You know how he is when he makes his mind up to do something. He will keep at it until he makes it all work out, but I think it's going to be rough, you know? I just hope he has thought about all the things he will have to change to fit a six year old girl into his life. How is he going to work night shifts at the clinic and be on call even when he is home? He can't just leave Sammy in the middle of the night when some farmer calls about a sick animal, right? And Sammy is used to being active in things she likes to do. How is he going to handle having to tell her he can't come to a dance recital, or that he had to miss her soccer game, or all the other things she will need that he may not realize he has to do for her?"

Lou had that confident look, the one she had learned in New York dealing with tough business people where there was always an answer prepared before the question was asked. "That's where we come in."

"What do you mean?"

"You are the one who said it, Amy. You told all of us we should be there for Ty when he needs us, and we will be. We won't be able to keep him out of trouble one hundred percent of the time, but we can damn sure pitch in when we have the chance. That means you too, Sis. That is how you get to know Sammy and make it better for her when her mom gets worse. I don't know how to even discuss this without sounding ghoulish, but we all know Charlie can't be here much longer and there is going to be a huge void in Sammy's life that will need to be filled. And you know as well as I do that when they lose her it will affect Ty, too. You just don't become involved with a family like that and walk away unaffected when someone dies. Sammy and Ty will need us all before that day comes, and for a long time after that. You need to learn to be patient and stick with it if you really do want to be involved in their lives, but you also need to be prepared for how tough it is going to get for everyone, not just them. I have talked to Bar about this and she asked me to have you come in to talk to her about it as well. I think you should do it, Amy. It isn't like we don't know what it feels like to lose loved ones, but this is different. There are things we simply don't know how to deal with like we should. It would be wise for all of us to make the effort to be ready because it will be hard for us too. We all love Ty, and you gotta admit that it would take Sammy all of about two minutes to win over the devil himself. Seeing that sweet little girl hurting and missing her mom without all the love she needs just won't do for me, and I'm betting it won't for you either."

All of the processing had taken a heavy toll. Amy kept still as she added more and more obstacles to the growing list of things she would have to learn how to overcome and drew her knees under her chin as she stared blindly across the room, "How did things get so crazy, Lou? Is it asking too much to be able to find a way to be happy for me and the people I care about?"

"No, Amy, it isn't, but not all happiness comes without a price. Sometimes you have to give up some things in your life in order to gain even more back. You have to have faith in yourself, along with a big dose of patience, and if you do the right things and believe that happiness will come to you when you are ready to accept it, you just might find it. The only thing I know for sure is that if you give up, you are already beaten, and we Flemings _do not, under any circumstances, ever_ give up."

 _To be continued_


	45. Chapter 45

CHAPTER 45

Careful to avoid driving across any unnecessary ruts or logs that might cause his passenger discomfort if the ride got too rough, Ty smiled as they rode along the woodsy trail that would take them to the overlook while enjoying listening to Charlie sing along with the songs playing on her favorite country station. It did his heart good to see her appearing more confident and less worried about everybody and all the issues she had been so focused toward that had consumed the last few days, the increasing pressure from which he figured to be the cause of her to snapping at him the day before. So much uncertainty had taken over her days and nights that she was emotionally drained from incessantly looking to find a way to somehow fix it all by herself. The way the stubborn country girl did the best she could to hide her inner fears from the very people who wanted to help her was affecting the usually upbeat interactions with everyone she associated with and he knew it was high time to lay down the law about letting those who cared about her to carry some of the load too. "Whatcha thinkin' about?" he asked, taking a subtle approach in getting a pleasant conversation started. "Looks like you are feeling better today."

"I was just thinking about Sammy and Katie getting along so well. I am so happy she has a friend like her," Charlie smiled back to her driver. "It has made a huge difference in giving her more to think about than what's going on here at the ranch…., with me."

"Lou says the same thing about having Sammy come to Heartland," he confided. "She is finalizing the divorce agreement with her husband right now and keeping Katie busier these days has made that part of it a bit easier for her too. It has been an amicable settlement between her and Peter, but knowing both of them like I do, that whole thing is like a powder keg waiting for someone to throw a match on it, so every little bit helps."

"So, Peter is an oil guy? How'd that happen?"

Ty squinted over a crooked smile, "Yeah, go figure, huh?"

"That goes to show you how love will make you do crazy things. I'll bet Jack and her dad were beside themselves when they found out. I mean, ranchers and oil men go together like, well, oil and water, right?"

"You could say that. There were some interesting times back then, that's for sure. Lou headed up a protest group to go head to head with Bedford Oil. That was the name of his company. All of us had some run-ins with his crew about that time. They were going off on their own and trespassing to test soil on private property, including Jack's. Peter said he didn't know about it. Maybe that's true, but I get the feeling that not much got by Peter when it came to his company. He thrives with doing business. Too bad he let that get in the way of being with his family."

The buggy popped through a clearing out of the dense woods and Ty stopped it close to the bench, hopped out of the driver's seat, and hurried around to help Charlie get to her feet. "Always such a gentleman," she smiled up at him and then a curious crook formed across her brow. "How did you ever learn to be so sweet with the ladies? I doubt you got that from your dad or Wade, if half of what you've told me about them is true."

"It's true, alright," his frown emphasizing the emotional scar he still carried with him as a result of having poor examples of father figures from his childhood. "I guess you will have to thank my Mom for that. When I was little, on her good days when she was sober, she used to take me uptown to go shopping or to a park and watch me play with other people's dogs. She would stop me when I was in a hurry to run off and do kid stuff, insisting that a guy was supposed to open doors for the girls, elderly people, folks that were handicapped, and so on. She insisted that it was a matter of respect, as well as generosity, and that it would say something about the kind of person I was if I always did things like that for others. I guess it never wore off."

"Theeeere it is!"

Ty wondered what she meant, the smile drawing her lips into a curious curl as she beamed at him. "What?" he asked.

"I have been wondering where you ever got that heart of yours, Ty Borden. After all the stories you have told me about your childhood and the things you had to go through, I have never been able to understand how you could grow up to have such a big heart. Of all the things that make you who you are, that is the best part, your heart. You look for hope and see the best in everything. You make the worst things bearable and the best things…, well, much better. I haven't told you that I love you lately, have I? Well, I do, no matter what. And I have been thinking…,"

A mock concern came across his face and it made Charlie laugh, "Stop that! I'm trying to be serious!"

"It's just lessons learned, from when you have been thinking," he answered.

His face changed again, the playful grin fading into the look of wheels turning inside that ever busy mind of his that she had come to know, "Before you say what you are thinking, I want you to know this," already guessing where he was going with the next part of their talk, tenderly brushing the back of her fingers across his face, looking deeply into his eyes, "You shouldn't do this if you are not absolutely sure about it. This will change who you are and what you are about…, forever. It isn't like I will be here to answer your questions or bail you out when you get over your head with Sammy. It won't be easy, nowhere close, and it has to be for keeps. She is my baby, Ty. I want more than anything else for her to grow up knowing that even when bad things happen that there is always hope, even when things hurt so bad that she feels like giving up, that if she keeps on trying she will come out of the storm into beautiful days that will be waiting for her on the other side as a reward for not giving up."

Charlie recognized his 'tell' when he was nervous, the rapid blinking and a boyish grin he relied upon to help him disarm any resistance to what he was about to say, but before he could speak she put a finger across his lips to continue her appeal to bring the crazy events of the past few days back to reality, "You are a wonderful man. You deserve _so much_ to find the things in life that you want, Ty, and I want you to be happy, too. Having a child depending on you changes everything. Are you sure you are ready for what you are getting yourself into?"

"I have never been surer of anything," he nodded, poised and confident. "It was like I had to go through all of those things growing up just so I could be ready for this. I know what I want to do."

Ty reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black box, dropped to one knee, and asked, "Charlene McCrary, will you marry me?" flicking the lid of the box open.

Through blurred eyes the breathless woman saw the most beautiful ring she had ever seen, reflections of the clear, blue Alberta sky sparkling across its setting as he held his offering up for her to see it. Charlie had dreamed of this moment since she saw Rory McAmis propose to Candice Owens in the middle of a barrel racing competition at one of her grandfather's rodeos when she was still in high school and imagined how wonderful it would feel to be loved like that, throwing caution to the wind and selflessly declaring their love for each other in front of all of those people and making promises to be together with that one special person, forever.

Charlie's left hand trembled when she presented it to the man looking up at her. He grasped it with his own shaking hand to steady it enough to slide the ring on her finger, "That's a yes, then?"

"Get up here and kiss me, you knucklehead! Yes! Yes! Yes! I will marry you!"

Ty rose to his feet and swept her into his arms, leaned in slowly to tease her, stopping just short of her lips, to which Charlie reacted by throwing her arms around his neck, yanking him the rest of the way to her waiting kiss. "C'mere, you."

Ever the gentleman, Ty supported her first steps to make sure she safely made it to the bench and steadied his new fiancée as she took a seat and looked up to him expectantly patting the empty space beside her, "I wasn't sure I would ever get to hear those words…, before it got to be too late…," she paused to push back at the reality check that would always be nagging to steal any joy she could find.

Glad that everything had gone smoothly up to this point, Ty took his place on the bench and put his arm around Charlie's shoulders and pulled her close, reached up with his palm and pulled her face into his chest, resting his cheek against her hair. "It's gonna be OK," he assured her, "I promise."

There were many things to talk about, some of which was the necessity of obtaining official paperwork for personal and business needs due to their new relationship. They also would need to arrange the start the adoption process for him to become Sammy's dad. The logistics of sewing together the new family they were about to create and firming up a plan to sort out their complicated future would be of utmost importance to discuss soon, but more than anything else, today he wanted to reassure Charlie that he had thought long and hard about the next chapter of their lives and was ready for whatever the next few months brought them, together as husband and wife, and to explain how she would now be letting him in on the things that had sent her to the limits of her patience with him and her family.

Morning came to the ranch like most other days, Grandpa and Katie up before first light like the day would get away from them if they weren't there to take charge of it, eating their oatmeal and toast with a side of bacon for the traditional rancher who insisted he needed at least something to stick to his ribs while he did his days' work, and as usual, Georgie stretching out her sleep as long as absolutely possible. The unusual thing, though, was that Amy must have been up before anyone else because when she tapped on her bedroom door to tell her breakfast was ready, Lou heard no response, and when she cracked the door to peek inside the bed was made and her sister was long gone.

Lou was still at the kitchen table with Katie after everyone else had gone off to do their morning chores or run into town for errands. The two of them perused through Marion's notes for something special to prepare for the evening meal hoping to create a pleasant distraction for Amy and the family from all of the changes of the past few days when she heard someone talking outside, apparently talking on the phone while they paced away from and back to the house. She was having a hard time locating the source of the one sided conversation so she put down her mother's recipe book and took a few steps across the kitchen toward the front door to investigate when she ran smack into Amy who came through the front door like she was on a mission to save the world.

"Woah! Sorry, Lou. Didn't see you there. What are you doing standing in the mud room, anyway?"

"I was just wondering who was outside. I could hear someone out there but I wasn't sure who it was. Everything OK?"

"Yeah, great, as a matter of fact. I just talked to one of the business contacts I made in Europe and her father is building a big new stable near Edmonton and wants me to come up there and look over their plans to see if I might have some ideas for improvements. I don't really care so much about that part. They probably wouldn't listen to me anyway, but if there could be a possibility that I might be able to turn that into working with some of their horses one day, that might be worth looking into. It's what I have been needing, Lou. I need to get back to work."

Lou looked concerned, worried that Amy might be getting ahead of herself and her physical and mental readiness for such a project, but considered that it might be the best thing for her sister right now to help get her back on track and start rebuilding her life at home again. "That's wonderful news, Amy, but I want you to promise me that you won't let your work keep you away from your therapy in Calgary that we have arranged with Dr. Milford and Dr. Bilson. You know how important it is to avoid neglecting them again, right?"

The natural free spirit of a cowgirl started to rebel at her older sister's business like arbitration, but the look on Lou's face showed real worry and she understood why she felt the way she did. "I promise, Lou. I get why I need to keep seeing them. I can assure you that I don't ever want to go through another stint in the hospital like I just did, so I will take it easy, OK?"

"OK, but I mean it, Amy. You have to start helping all of the rest of us out by taking care of yourself better. We have kinda gotten attached to you, so we want to keep you around a while longer whether you believe us or not," Lou stayed serious for as long as she thought it took to make her point, then softened her gaze into a grin and bumped her sister's shoulder with her own.

The younger Fleming dropped her eyes to the floor and then redirected a sisterly moment to Lou, "I guess there is someone else I haven't told how much I love them as much as I should have. I love you, Sis. I know you probably won't believe me when I say how much I appreciate what you and the rest of the family have done for me, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I don't know where I would be if you guys had given up on me like you had every right to do, but because of your not letting go of me and my problems, I have another chance to get it right this time. I will never forget that, Lou, and I mean it."

 _To be continued_


	46. Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

Amy drew back the curtains to peer outside the window of her upstairs guest bedroom, the brilliant white-orange glow of sunset marking the end of a four day visit to the Riverside Meadows Ranch just southwest of Edmonton. Puffy grey clouds trailed high across a dimming aqua blue sky illuminated by the last of the evening sun as if denying being pulled into darkness like the prairies below. Taking a few minutes to view the ranch's rich green pastures, the hired consultant admired the many long rows of straight white fences bordering some of Canada's finest thoroughbreds as they grazed lazily inside a sweeping bow of the North Saskatchewan River. It was enough to make any horse crazy girl take notice, an awe inspiring scene right off of a postcard she would have bought if she had seen it in the truck stop where she had stopped on the way here.

After the surprise call a week ago from Elizabeth Pittinger, a recent acquaintance she had met in Europe while on tour with the Royal Jumping Team, Amy had waivered back and forth on accepting the offer for another two days before Lou and her grandfather managed to convince her to venture up near the Provincial Capital to take the family up on their request to look over the latest blueprints of the large new stable operation they were planning to build. The Pittingers had hopes the veteran of some the best facilities in Europe might be able to offer insightful leading edge design ideas while there was still time to make any necessary changes before construction was to begin.

The reluctant homebody agreed with her family that she needed a break. The distraction would keep her mind off worrying about getting her business back on track as well as the wedding Ty and Charlie were understandably rushing into this upcoming weekend. She had been invited and still intended to attend out of respect for Ty and his new family to be, but it was proving to be a hard pill to swallow just the same.

Having spent the week sharing her professional opinions with construction contractors, interior decorators, and landscapers, as well as a couple of the Pittingers wealthiest clients, Amy felt satisfied that her advice was at least being taken seriously and demonstrated to the builders a few ideas they had not considered with any of their previous projects. This facility promised to be something different, more involved in centering around the horses needs than just their owners like most other large stables she had seen, and according to Liz, as she preferred to be called, the concept had apparently impressed her father as well, an accomplishment few had managed to do up to this point of the process.

Amy glanced in the mirror one last time before leaving the room. Her best jeans and casual shirt were the nicest things she had brought with her to wear, not thinking there would be any formal dinners to attend, but Liz assured the house guest that her family preferred casual anyway and not to be worried about being underdressed for the farewell barbeque they were throwing in her honor.

Country songs played reasonably low enough for easy conversation in the background as she entered the beautifully terraced rose gardens surrounding the patio deck. The view was far more impressive than she would have thought without at least a glimpse of the Rockies off in the distance, a standard expectation around her part of the province, but the manicured grounds bordering the river made its own memorable impression and set a relaxing mood for a family style get together. The dinner turned out to be a treat. Listening to J. D. Pittinger spin one tale after another of his exploits proved to be entertaining, the way he embellished the details, and ranged from his climb to the top of a cutthroat oil industry in the early days to the success of his horses and riders in major competitions all around North America. The seasoned aroma coming from the grill was worth the trip in itself, enticing an appetite she had forgotten she had. As the dinner progressed, Amy took the opportunity to show her appreciation for the family's gesture, "This is so nice of you all to have this dinner for me. Hallie, I've just got to ask, _where_ did you get the recipe for this sauce?" she asked of Liz's mother who smiled cheerily at the curiosity.

"You like it? Our chef goes down to Austin every year to compete in the 'Texas Monthly Barbeque Contest'. It is put on by a magazine down there every fall and is one of the world's biggest gatherings of professional and amateur chefs in the world trying to come up with the perfect flavor."

"Well, I think your chef has found it!"

"Thank you Ms. Fleming!" Bob Killian surprised her when he leaned across her right shoulder and used his tongs to pick up another offering from the platter full of the most tender and delicious ribs she had ever tasted and put it on her empty plate. "I am glad you enjoyed my latest concoction. It's the one I will be competing with this year. Looks like those folks down there in Hudson haven't been feeding you enough anyways, so here ya go..., guaranteed to stick to your ribs!"

"Bob! That kind of remark is fine with all of us because we know what kind of cut up you are," the matriarch barked out sharply, "but Amy doesn't know you as well as we do and could take offense over a comment like that!"

"I'm sorry, Amy. I guess I forgot that you were new around here," the boisterous Texas transplant apologized. "You fit in so well with our family that you already seem like one of us."

"It's OK, Hallie. I take no offense over Bob's mentioning my weight. For the record, he isn't the only one to notice it. I've had family and close friends tell me the same thing a lot lately, so I know it's true. This has been a rough year for me. Things haven't gone the way I'd hoped they would, personally or professionally, so my appetite has been a little off, I suppose, but Bob's ribs have gone a long way to fixing that tonight, though," making sure the chef saw her authentic smile so as not to be worried about his comment.

"Thanks, Amy. And, when you head out for home tomorrow, I'll have a nice big cooler full of my best cuts for you to take home and share with your folks. Just be sure you tell 'em I said to make sure you get your fair share!" the chef smiled, the mischievousness still shining in his eyes for her to enjoy.

"Bob, Those Texans may as well hand that prize over to you right now. This is _amazing_! Thank you! And, don't you worry about me getting my fair share. If somebody tries to beat me out of the last piece of barbeque on the platter, they just might get a fork in the back of the hand!" Amy exaggerated a stabbing gesture with her fist to the family's amusement, and Bob slapped his knee when he bent over laughing.

Hallie picked up on the apparent strain of her guest, speaking about her recent misfortunes, and responded, "It is such a shame that great opportunity didn't turn out like you expected."

Amy now felt that a better explanation was necessary to clear up any confusion over her comment, "Thanks, Hallie. The trip to Europe was a wonderful experience, at first," she began, "but I ended up losing more than I could have ever hoped to gain from it and I haven't adjusted well, I guess."

"What on earth happened over there?" the older woman asked, "Was it the pressure from the job, or…."

This was going to require a delicate touch, Amy decided, and sighed, "A little over a year ago I had a pretty serious head trauma while working with a horse at Hillhurst Stables. It was Emir, the prince's primary jumper, who didn't do well on the trip when he brought him here to Alberta to train for the summer. I was hurt very badly, even lost my sight for a few days, but eventually I got better and the doctor's told me that I was fine. Well, I wasn't. I began to have severe headaches again and finally went back to a doctor recommended by a professional friend of the family to find out why they hurt so bad. He wanted to begin running some tests right away but that is when Ahmed came to convince me to leave for Europe again, this time to manage the team. Things weren't going well between me and my family at the time and I'd already lost my fiancé over the way I treated him during the first tour, so I decided to take the job. It turns out that putting off the medical care I was set to begin in Calgary for as long as I did almost killed me. I collapsed in Barcelona which resulted in an emergency brain surgery that saved my life. That's what happened to my hair," she tried a nervous chuckle. "It took several months of rehab and rest at my step-grandmother's villa in France before I knew for sure that I had a chance to fully recover."

Hallie nodded as she tried to follow along. "You are very lucky to have someone like her for support when you need her."

"Yes, I am. She is a wonderful person. My grandpa did good!" she smiled.

"So, how are you now, Amy?" Liz joined in, disturbed to hear about the perceived successful tour ending on such a sour note. "Are you getting the medical attention you need? Are the doctors making any progress in treating your headaches?"

"I still have a lot of doctor's appointments and treatments ahead of me, but yes, I seem to be getting better now. They have explained to me that my physical injuries had some effect on my mental condition and likely altered some of the decisions I made, and I made some bad ones, but that doesn't make things right with the people I let down. What is done is done. Now I have to put my life back together, what's left of it."

J. D. Pittinger had listened through the explanation with sincere concern, but business was his forte, "Where does all of this leave you, Amy, professionally, I mean? Do you have plans to work with another team soon?"

"No, J. D., not yet. Since I have been home, all my time has been used getting re-settled at the ranch and arranging for continued treatments at the clinics in Calgary. Once I know the doctors feel better about my healing process I intend to start reaching out to my old clients, and some new ones as well, to reopen my business as soon as possible and begin working with horses at Heartland again."

"Let me know when you are ready, Amy. Maybe I can be of help," the savvy businessman offered. "After getting to know you better and seeing the ideas you brought to the table, I have some ideas of my own that may be perfect for you. I already had a pretty good idea of what you can do with horses. You know, I have been watching your career for a long time now. I knew your mother, Marion. I brought her up here once to work with one of my horses. Did you know that?"

Amy was astonished, "No, I didn't! You knew my Mom?"

"Yes, I did."

"How? You said you hired her to work with one of your horses?" she asked, a new excitement rushing through her in hopes for a new story about her well-traveled equestrienne mother that she hadn't heard before.

"Yeah, boy, that's been a while ago, hasn't it?" J.D. reminisced. He leaned back in his chair and asked, "Mind if I get an after dinner cigar going first, then tell you about it?"

"Go ahead, I don't mind," Amy answered, "I actually enjoy the aroma of the ones my grandpa sneaks out to the barn and smokes once in a while when he thinks no one notices. He had a heart attack a while back and if Lisa catches him, there's hell to pay!" chuckling at the image of the proper lady trying to lay down the law to the bull headed old cowboy.

"Lisa Stillman…," the experienced horseman perked up. "I heard she got herself a cowboy! Hell, I've done business with her often over the years. She runs a fine operation down there at Fairfield. I hope our project turns out to be as successful as hers. Let's see, now, that would make her your…"

"Step grandmother," Amy reminded her new friend.

"Damn small world, ain't it!" he shook his head and wondered what kind of man Amy's grandfather must be because he knew Lisa Stillman to have been a bit of a thoroughbred herself. "Anyway, I had gone all the way to Ontario to pick up this two-year-old I'd heard about. He was sixteen hands, lean, and muscular, and I knew the second I saw him that he could make a fine jumper. He was one of the most beautiful animals I'd ever seen. I figured I could bring him home and have my head trainer work with him since he had done so well with all the other horses. I didn't even think about him being a problem. Turns out, just about the time we started training him hard, he wouldn't have any of it! Got to where he would just as soon kick you senseless as to look at you. Damn near took my trainer's head off one day! That's when I decided to call this woman horse whisperer I'd heard about."

The term 'horse whisperer' used to irritate her mother, as well as her, because of the confusion it caused in making clients unrealistic in what to expect when a person of their profession worked with problem horses, but the story was building up her expectations and Amy decided to let it go to keep from disrupting the old man's memory.

"I'd used a First Nations trainer by the name of Victor Whitetail, from over by Canmore, from time to time, and I called him to ask if he could come up to look at my new horse for me, but he was off somewhere playing golf or some such damn thing and referred me to Marion Fleming. Said she was as good as there was, so I called her to see if she would be interested in making the trip up here and see what she could do to help me out."

Amy smiled at the mention of Victor. She was pleased to know that he was in the one who told J.D. about her mother.

"When Marion first got here, she hopped out of her truck and ask me, 'You Mr. Pittinger?' Looked me right in the eye, shook my hand and introduced herself, and never said another word before she walked straight to the fence over there and asked me, 'That him?' she says. Didn't have much to say, your mother," he recalled, a favorable recollection showing in his expression.

Thinking she should still defend her mother's short manner, "Yeah, Mom could get really intense when she knew she had a horse with a problem. She would put all of her attention on it to try and figure out how she was going to handle it."

"I liked the hell out of it," J.D. laughed, "Most of them horse whisperers spend the first thirty minutes giving you a hundred reasons why they may not be able to do a damn thing to help the animal, tell you all kinds of mumbo jumbo about all the secret crap they may have to try if the horse is difficult, and then go off chasing them around the field until they finally give up and ask me to bring 'em into a pen so they can work with them. But not Marion."

"No, she didn't fool around with any nonsense," the still admiring daughter recalled. "She got right to the heart of the matter."

"That, she did. But, funny thing, I remember, she had this toe headed little girl with her, prettiest little thing, she was, that got out of the truck and had to step right along to keep up with her momma so she could help. Don't suppose you'd know who that was?"

It hit her with a shudder. She could remember the day, not so much at first, but as J.D. kept filling in the corners of her memory the picture became clearer with each piece he put in place. "Oh, my, God! I do! That was the first time Mom took me with her on a road trip far enough away from home to stay overnight!" Amy shot up from her chair and spun around on her heels straining to see the place again through a six-year-old's eyes, "We stayed in that cabin, right over there! I remember all the horses on the curtains and making so much of a fuss over them that I drove Mom crazy the whole time we were here!"

A knot came up in her throat as she fought the embarrassment of letting the surprise flashback overtake her in front of her new friends. She covered her mouth in awe as the memories warmed her from the inside as if her mother was standing right there beside her.

"Still there!" Liz informed her friend. "And I had the same ones in my room, too!"

Amy realized that Liz must have been here as well, seeing as how she was about the same age, "You know, I don't remember seeing another kid here."

"I was likely at horse camp. I would spend several weeks every summer with my school buddies at a camp in the mountains," Liz explained.

The old man continued, "Ya remember what your mom did next?"

Trying her best to reach back for a lost piece of the puzzle that helped put back together her best memories of childhood, the frustrated woman pinched her lips in the effort to bring it all back before the older man gave her memory another nudge.

"Well, your mother opened the gate, showed her little daughter how the latch worked before she closed it, and walked straight out to that horse and got in his face, nose to nose, and started talking to him. I couldn't hear everything she said and I half expected him to take a nip out of her nose for her, being that close, but the next thing you know, Marion had a lead around his neck and came walking up to where you and I were watching them from and asked were the round pen was, or a small arena of some kind if I had it, then told you to open the gate for them, which you did just like you had done it a thousand times before."

"I probably had! That was one of my main jobs, tending the gates!" Amy recalled, overwhelmed with the flood of memories.

The grown up momma's helper could feel her mother's footsteps as she and the horse passed by while she held that gate. She could even hear her voice again in J.D.'s slightly embellished account of his first meeting with Marion Fleming, horse whisperer. Amy asked, "So, where's that pen?" savoring every detail she could get out of animated storyteller. "There it is, right there!" pointing as if she may have found a lost treasure.

The wealthy businessman was only a cowboy at heart, after all, and seeing Amy's response to his recollection of Marion had him even more enthusiastic in sharing his little slice of the past, "Yup, right over there. That pen is just like it was when your mother was here. I'd just built it that spring and she was the first one to put it to use."

J. D. got out of his chair to stand beside the excited visitor, "This is something, eh? After all these years?" apparently getting almost as much enjoyment out of the memory as his guest.

Forgetting that she had only known the wealthy oil man for a few days, Amy turned toward the older man and hugged him, "Thank you, so much, for helping me to remember that trip. I had forgotten all about it."

"I am glad to see it make you so happy, Amy. Your mother was a special woman and it does my heart good to see that the apple didn't fall far from the tree."

Feeling good about the shared memories, the old cowboy turned oil man twisted around to his wife and daughter who were still smiling beside the fire pit, amused at witnessing the interaction between a normally gruff old man and his newest friend, "Well, ladies, this has been a fantastic get together, but I think I've had about all I can do for today. I'm heading on up to bed, so goodnight. Anything you need, Lizzy will fix you up. See you all in the morning." J. D. knew the usual order of business when Liz and Hallie were left with the rare extravagance of being left to have after dinner conversation with someone other than his usual male business contacts and directed the next comment to his wife and daughter, "I trust there'll be a lot of talking left to be done between you girls so go easy on our guest, OK?"

"Sure, Pop! We will take care of her just fine, thank you very much," Liz spoke up, hopping out of her chair to give her adoring father a kiss on the cheek before he started for the house to retire for the evening.

"Hold on, Hon, I think I will join you!" Hallie rose out of her chair to follow along, sensing that it might be better to leave the two younger ladies to have a more private conversation. "Good night, Amy. Liz, maybe Amy would like to spend her final night here in the guest cabin instead of her room in the house?"

"No, Hallie, that's not necessary, but I would love to go inside to see it again, if that's OK?"

"Of course it is." Hallie assured her.

"C'mon, follow me," Liz brightened up. "Night Mom, Dad!"

"Night girls," the couple said together as they walked away.

The door creaked when Liz pushed it open, a slight aroma greeting them as they walked in. "That smell, I remember that too! What is it, do you know?"

"Vanilla extract. My grandmother used to mix up a batch of it to make the rooms more special for guests back in the days before air fresheners were available."

"I _love_ the way it makes the room feel, like someone you love has been here!"

"Me too. I think of Nanna every time I come in here. So, does being here bring back any more memories of your visit?"

Taking a slow turn from the center of the guest cabin, Amy let her eyes explore the features of the room, "I slept here, in this bed, Mom was over there. I remember sitting up and staring at the wallpaper and curtains and trying to figure out how I was going to sweet talk Mom into doing that to my bedroom."

"You got her to do it?"

"About a week later." The misty-eyed cowgirl mused. "I must have mentioned how much I liked the place we stayed a hundred times that week after we got back home," unable to contain the chuckle as she pictured the exasperated look her mom would give her each time she brought it up. "I had been out in the barn taking care of my pony before dinnertime and when I walked into my room to clean up for dinner I remember stopping dead in my tracks when I saw the curtains. I heard Mom gigging to my grandpa and sister who had snuck up behind me to watch, and when I turned around I must have had this silly excited look on my face because all three of them cracked up and laughed out loud at me, but I didn't care because I had the coolest room of anyone I knew!"

"You must have had a special relationship with your mom from the way Dad talks about seeing you helping her like you did when you were still so little, and then, after you got a bit older, working with her and learning all the things she taught you about understanding how to work with horses the way you can."

"She is the one who got me interested in horses, no doubt. I wish I knew half as much as she did, though."

"Don't sell yourself short, Amy. You have done some amazing things to still be so young. Not just everybody moves half way around the world to take over a struggling international equestrian team and make them winner's at a World Cup competition in a matter of weeks like you did."

The wince didn't go unnoticed when her guest reacted to the comment and cautiously posed the question she had been dying to ask, "If you don't mind my asking, Amy, what happened with the prince's team? It looked to me like you two were headed for the top of the world together. I assume that must be what happened with your fiancé?"

Amy looked away long enough to be able to offer a straight forward reply, then turned to Liz, the pain of reliving the tale impossible to hide, "Ty and I were not ready to be married. We tried, but both of us had a hard time understanding what it really means to commit to someone enough to share your life completely with each other. We had been best friends for years and we loved each other very much. I still believe we might have made a go of it if outside influences hadn't come between us like they did."

"Outside influences, meaning His Royal Highness?"

"I guess you could say that."

"Come on, Amy. A freaking prince? What girl is not going to go after a real life fairytale? Who could blame you. It would be like actually knowing how Grace Kelly must have felt leaving Hollywood to go live with Prince Rainier in Monaco! I can certainly see why Prince Ahmed would have been hard to resist."

"Yeah, well, first impressions aren't all they are cracked up to be, I assure you, and I'm not sure I will ever believe in happily ever after anymore."

"How so? Look, I'm sorry to be so nosy. If this is too personal for you to talk about, I understand. Just tell me to shut up and that will be the end of it."

"It's OK, Liz. The doctors have told me that it isn't healthy to keep the frustration bottled up like I do. I think I can trust you to keep what I am saying between us, because I am not sure that this whole thing is over yet."

"What do you mean by not being over? Do you still have feelings for Ahmed?"

"Oh, I have feelings, alright! I could be put in jail for life if I acted on the feelings I have about _him_. That's the problem. I think he has those same feelings about me, too. I haven't talked about it with anyone yet, but I guess I'm still a little scared. I cost Ahmed the right to take over his father's legacy as king of his country, something he wanted more than anything, and I think he may try to get back at me someday for what happened in Barcelona."

"You think he would really do something to hurt you?"

"You have no idea! Once you really get to know him, you would come to understand that he is capable of the most despicable things you could ever imagine. In fact, I am sure that someone is following me. Sometimes, it's just this nagging feeling that someone is watching me but I can't ever see them, but a few weeks ago I was in town getting our order at the feed store and there was a new black SUV like Ahmed drove when he was here before circling the block while we loaded the truck. I counted three times, could have been more before I noticed it, but I'm pretty sure they saw me looking at them the last time by and I didn't see them again until I got out of town."

"Amy, there are lots of black SUV's running around. What makes you feel so sure that you are being followed?"

"About half way home I noticed the same truck in my rear view mirror following me on the range road near the ranch. It stayed about the same distance behind me and I was going slower than usual because of the load. I figured a local would have caught me fairly quickly so I got suspicious and stopped on one of the hills so I could see it better. That's when I knew for sure. If it had been one of our neighbors they would have kept coming, but when it stopped too, that's when I knew it must be either Ahmed, or worse yet, one of his thugs, because if it is one of them, it's just a matter of time until they do what they have come here to do."

 _To be continued_


	47. Chapter 47

CHAPTER 47

"They have a name for that, you know. Bridezilla! That's what they call them."

"Ty, stop it! I'm just nervous, that's all. I am _not_ a Bridezilla!

"Nervous is not threatening to lop some poor kids head off for bringing the wrong color of place settings for the reception," the groom said as he clutched his impatient bride to be by the shoulders and squeezed lovingly as he attempted not to laugh.

"Come _on_!" Charlie tried to plead justifiable lapse of sanity, " _Nobody_ orders orange and green place mats for a wedding? And I wasn't _that_ mean."

"Tell that to the kid that just left here trying not to cry. You set the poor guy back five years in his confidence in dealing with females, let alone approach a woman without at least carrying a can of bear spray to protect himself. He will probably be traumatized by girls for a long time because of meeting up with you today."

"You are over exaggerating," the wired up fiancée had calmed enough to see his point, "but, I should find him and tell him I know it wasn't his fault."

"I'll take care of that when I go into town. I'm afraid that if he sees you coming through the front door he will be out the back before you even lay eyes on him."

"You are probably right, so thank you." Charlie looked her man in the eyes and squinted a suspecting eye, "I think you are enjoying seeing me like this a bit too much."

"Oh, I wouldn't use the word, _enjoying,_ exactly, but you have kind of reminded me of the feisty cowgirl that I first met, unbelievably beautiful and just as intimidating."

"Nobody says feisty anymore," patting Ty on the chest and giving him a pitiful shake of the head for being so adorably old school, "and for good reason." Then a curious twitch tugged at her lips, "You really thought I was intimidating?" Charlie asked, the surprise on her face turning into a pout before slowly twisting into a wry smile as he approached her.

Ty pecked the woman who would help him write another chapter of his story on the forehead and told her, "I gotta go into town and finish up a few things for tomorrow. I need to stop by a couple of places before they close today. Behave yourself and try not to send anyone else out of here in tears, please."

"I promise…, that I will at least try," she clearly teased, and then threw her arms around Ty's neck and pulled him back into a long kiss.

"Good," the anxious groom to be said as he stepped away and headed through the door, "but I am going to put a sign in the front yard that says, "Beware of the Bride," just in case."

Leaping off the front porch, the agile veterinarian ducked just enough for small sack full of birdseed intended to be tossed upon the bride and groom after the ceremony to just graze his hair as it streaked past, "Hey!"

"You ain't seen nuthin" yet, old man!" she shouted, "Just wait 'till the ink dries on that piece of paper tomorrow! I'll show ya what's what after that!"

All the helpers working on arranging the rented tables under the tent on the front lawn turned to look at her in worry that she might be serious. "Don't worry, guys," addressing the crowd from the front porch like a politician at a rally and quipping "I'll have him trained in no time!"

After using a split second to interpret her laughter, they all accepted Charlie's wry sense of humor and joined in with her.

"Charlene! Stop that." Margie's voice rose from the kitchen as she came to see what all the commotion was about. "You two are going to have all these people thinking you have both lost your minds!"

Charlie stopped and took in the perfectly themed lawn, and just as spontaneously as they might have expected, called to the crew to come closer, "Seriously, every one of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. The reception area looks wonderful and you have all done a great job in helping us get it ready on such short notice. This is _so_ beautiful, and it is going to make one of the best days of my life that much more special. Thank you!"

Now evidently sincere, the nervous wife to be walked down the steps and handed each of the workers an envelope accompanied with a hug, and when she had presented the last worker his bonus, scurried back to her grandmother standing there on the front porch watching with pride, "I've already lost my mind, Gram, because I know I'm crazy about him. I can't help myself!" and planted a big kiss on the older woman's cheek. "Whaddaya think? Are we ready for this?"

Margie chuckled with a nudge of her shoulder into her granddaughter's arm. "It's perfect, honey. It's all turning out exactly as it should."

* * *

Ty drove into town and made sure his first stop was at the party planner's business where he figured the after school part time helper had probably retreated to lick his wounds. After taking a few minutes attempting to smooth over the rough spots in the store's transaction with the nervous bride, the apologetic groom finished up with reassuring the young man that maybe all brides didn't get that high strung before a wedding, slipped a ten spot in his hand when he shook it, and headed out the door carrying a large box full of lavender place settings to put them in the front seat of his truck before walking across the street to the next errand at Gillman's tailor shop.

Raymond Gillman, a forty-year veteran of more nervous grooms than he could remember, straightened the lapel on Ty's new suit jacket and whisked a lent brush across the shoulders. The custom fitted suit was a gift to Ty from Clint and Margie, chosen instead of a tux with the intention of his getting better use out of the investment. After fidgeting with the buttons and checking his alterations around the chest, the picky suit maker stepped away to size up his latest creation, "Well, I think we got it right, young man. When she lays eyes on you in this suit she will know that she made the right choice when she said _Yes!_ "

Ty stared at his reflection and had to admit that he had never looked better, but seeing himself all dressed up was another reminder that tomorrow was one more page to be turned in the story that made up his life and caused his gut to question whether or not he was ready for it. It took him away for a few moments, thinking about the turmoil, second chances, and loves lost, won, and then lost again before bringing him back to being the man in the mirror.

"Ty? Don't you agree?" the older man seeing the pause in the groom's reflective stare.

"Oh…, Yes…, It's perfect, Mr. Gillman!" stammering back to the reality of moving on. "I want to thank you again for putting me at such a priority. I know you are a busy man and I can't thank you enough for getting my suit ready in time."

"Look, Ty, this is a small town, and that being said, I have heard a bit about your situation. I just want you to know that I understand more than you think I do about what lies ahead for you. I lost my dear Emma ten years ago to that damn cancer. For you to go through with this after all that has happened, I have to say that I have not seen a young man so loyal to the people he cares about in many, many years. I wanted to make sure you looked your best for tomorrow, and it does my heart good to think I can play a part in making sure Clint and Margie's granddaughter will have a day she can pass on to that sweetheart of a daughter of hers to remember for the rest of her life. You are going to make a big difference with what you are doing, Ty. I just wanted you to know that."

Somewhat taken aback by the man's unexpected compassion, Ty looked him in the eye and gave an appreciative nod, reaching out his hand to offer a shake. "Thank you for saying that," still getting used to having people offer thoughtful and supportive things after all these years living in Hudson without them needing something in return, "I really means a lot to me to know someone understands what I have to do."

A firm pat on the shoulder from the store keeper's hand sealed the personal moment between the two men, and then he said, "Alright then, Ty, let's get this beautiful suit put into a garment bag so it stays nice and fresh for tomorrow. I have a historical society meeting to get to. We are going to discuss setting up a display in the museum down the street chronicling the 2013 flood and the plight of our citizens during the aftermath. We expect a big turnout with so many people wanting to donate photographs and various keepsakes that they recovered."

"I am glad to hear they are going to do that. It will mean a lot to everybody who lives here and show how people can still get things done as a community when they really need each other."

"True. So many of us are all wrapped up in our own problems that we forget to think about what others are going through. It's good to know that there are still folks out there who get it, the way we all come together when times get tough."

* * *

Changed back into his usual jeans and pull over shirt, Ty opened the passenger door of his old blue truck and snaked the hook holding the fanciest clothes he had ever owned through the slight crack in the rolled down window in order to keep them from sliding off the seat and into the dirty rubber mats on the floor. There were no luxuries in 1957 for such things as hooks for clothes hangers in old trucks like his GMC. It was built for doing work, not hauling fancy clothes around, and he had employed many imaginative tricks over the years to make the vintage vehicle suit his next century needs.

The next stop would be at the clinic to check in and make sure that Scott and Cass were still going to be able to make it to the ceremony tomorrow. When he walked through the back door the first thing Ty saw was his old friend, Caleb O'Dell, sitting on Cassandra's desk, no doubt waiting to take a crack at exercising his abundant charm in trying to make up for the latest thing he had done to piss off his girlfriend.

"Hey man! How's it feel to know you have less than twenty-four hours of freedom left?" the long time buddy took a playful jab at his best friend.

"Not too bad, actually. I will be glad just to have the panic over with and get everything back to normal."

"Ain't gonna be any normal from now on, my friend," the bodacious cowboy chirped, still feeling the sting of a shattering divorce from a high strung wife who admittedly came from a couple of stations in life above his, "After tomorrow, you are gonna know what it's like to have your ass in a…, Oh, hey Cass!"

Cassandra never missed a beat as she pushed through the door and put the clip board she was carrying down on the desk with a snap, "What's this about Ty's ass?" the perceptive look of ' _I'll show you whose ass you need to be concerned about_ ' raised eyebrow directed toward her yet unrefined cowboy.

"Uhhh, nothing, Hon, I was just telling Ty that things sure would be changing a lot around here, him getting' married and all."

"Mmm, humm," the less than amused girlfriend muttered, still showing her latest project the stink eye.

"Oh, hey!" he rebounded as if his predicament had left him unscathed, "I was thinkin' now that you are going to be old married folks and needing to get out of the house once in a while, me and Cass could watch Sammy for you when you need us too, right babe?"

Not one to let an opportunity for flexing her sharp wit pass by, Cassandra jumped at the opportunity, "You know, that might actually be fun. That way I could have another kid come and play with the one I already have and keep him busy for an evening."

Ty was amused by Caleb's blank stare, watching the sarcastically outclassed cowboy's expression change as he came up to speed while deciphering the latest yarn his girlfriend had just tangled him up in, and started toward the back door to let them work it out for themselves, "OK, then, we will see you both tomorrow?"

"Yes, you will!" Caleb assured his friend, none the worse for wear.

* * *

One last stop was to be at the Heartland Ranch. He wanted to catch the all of the people there before it got too late in the evening knowing the ranching family still followed a tradition of turning in early after a hard day's work. He watched the sun sinking in the west, closing in on the Rockies waiting to swallow it into darkness when the time came. Old memories dominated his attention as he navigated the range roads that took him to the closest place he had ever had to feeling like home. The words of the tailor had brought his thoughts back to the way people around here stuck together and the need to reassure himself that the people he considered to be his tried and true family, as if there would be any question, would be sure to attend the ceremony he always thought would be held at Heartland's log ranch house.

When he parked his old GMC in the slot beside the front yard gate he had used a thousand times before, his body froze in place, unable to move without taking a minute to pause and reminisce about how drastically his life had changed since the first time he had come here to the ranch. He sat and watched Lou through the kitchen window drying dinner dishes at the sink, a standard in his mind like the needle on a compass pointing toward true north, and turned to his left when he heard a racket out by the barn to see Katie following Georgie, making a comical show of dragging a bale of hay to the pen where Phoenix and Trouble, Lou's older daughter's trick riding horses, were waiting on a treat from the girl's pockets like they had come to expect every day. Jack had just come in from the back lot with his tractor. Ty noticed the strained extra effort he used in getting out of the cab, a sign that some other things were changing as well.

Amy's new truck was nowhere in sight. Maybe that was for the best. Even after all this time, they were both still having a hard time coming to terms with the wedding they were supposed to share not becoming a reality. Their lives had taken separate paths and now the roads they would travel had taken different directions. The thought still cut through his heart, the realization all too clear that he had not moved on as far as he probably should have by now.

"Ty! Good to see ya, man." The old rancher had made his way up to the rolled down window of the familiar truck and leaned on the door. "What brings you all the way out here? I would'a thought you'd be too busy today for much of anything besides getting ready for the big day tomorrow."

"Yeah, I've been busy, all right. I just needed to get away for a while and run some errands."

"Errands, huh?"

"Yeah, well, I've already got all those things taken care of. I just thought I would come out and make sure that you were all still coming tomorrow."

Jack put his hand on the young man's shoulder, holding back a glint of moisture in his eye as he nodded, "You think we wouldn't?"

"No, I guess not, but…,"

Jack had known all along about the real concern his former ranch hand was struggling with, "I talked to Amy yesterday. She's been up near Edmonton working with a client this week, but she said she would be home tonight, ought to be here any time now, in fact, and intends to be there with the rest of us tomorrow. It isn't like any of us don't think of you as part of the family, Ty. That hasn't changed for any of us, no matter how hard it has been lately."

Unable to speak, Ty nodded as he looked straight ahead, not wanting his mentor in life to see how shaken he was by the mention of the girl that would always hold the biggest piece of his heart.

"Good to hear, Jack. I guess I'd better be heading back to my place. I'm banished from 8S until tomorrow afternoon. Bad luck to see the bride, so they tell me. Probably safer to steer clear of her for the next few hours anyway. Charlie's set on full tilt right about now."

Jack chuckled at remembering how uptight Lou was during the last few days before her wedding, "I hear ya. It's a good thing you are doing, Ty, as long as it's what makes you happy too. I just wish things could have been easier for you. You know where I am, if you ever just want to talk."

Ty nodded again looking straight out of his windshield, "I know…, I know. Thanks, Jack," finally managing a quick glance up to the man who had been the most important role model in his life.

The ancient engine purred to life and the old truck began to roll away from the well-worn parking spot. Lou looked through the kitchen window raising her palms upward at questioning why her 'adopted baby brother' hadn't come inside to say hello on the eve of his big day, but returned his wave anyway as she watched him cranking on the non power steering wheel toward the gate at the top of the hill. She began to wonder which time would be the last for her to see that old truck wind around their driveway as it left. She had thought about that more than once during the up and down days the evolving young man and her sister were still figuring things out between them. The older Fleming sister admired the rebellious boy who had turned into such a fine young man, his tenacity to fight for what he believed in, and his ability to make something successful out of not much to work with, but also feared for his wellbeing at knowing he was in for a rougher road than he had ever traveled before. Everyone who lived here was in some kind of transition with their lives and she took a minute to say a little prayer, something she seldom did, and remembered to ask that all of the people she loved would be able to find their happiness someday soon.

* * *

Liz took a thoughtful sip of her fresh margarita, her friend's account from the evening before of the past few months still eating at the back of her mind, "Have you told anyone about your concerns over the prince?" she asked as the two women enjoyed a pleasant last afternoon conversation on the rose covered terrace before Amy headed south to Hudson.

"All of this has scared me enough that I thought I'd better buy something to protect myself with, just in case, but I didn't want to get everybody all shaken up over nothing. I mentioned that I got a firearm but I wanted to be sure I wasn't imagining things first before I told them the real reason why. I don't want to get in the habit of crying wolf too often because I can tell how disappointed everyone is with me right now, but I keep a weapon with me at all times these days. Don't worry," she noticed Liz's hesitation at the confession, "I left it in the suitcase since this place looks like it would be secure enough."

"Would you mind if I told Dad? He has the kind of friends in Edmonton who would check this out for you, if he asked them to. If Ahmed or any of his people are here they will find out and take care of it, no matter how important he is supposed to be."

"Thank you for not thinking I have lost my mind. I'm not sure my own family feels that way anymore," Amy confided. "I've given them plenty of reasons to doubt me lately. I can't believe how fast everything got so out of control."

"It is just so hard for me to grasp that Ahmed could be like you have described him. After meeting him, I never would have thought…,"

Amy felt she needed to explain further to her friend, "Ahmed was raised to be a ruthless leader from childhood," she warned. "He can be charming, obviously, but once he is more comfortable that he has you where he wants you, he is more calculating, conniving, and as cold hearted as a snake when it comes to getting something he wants or needs. He has no qualms about hurting anyone who stands in his way."

"But, how can he be like that and have the support of his people?"

"Because their society is different than ours. His family has ruled their country for over a hundred and fifty years. They control everything, the courts, the financial institutions, business, religion…, everything…, and bad things have a way of happening to anyone who doesn't comply with their way of thinking."

"That sounds so primitive, like the stories you would read in old history books or see in movies!"

"Maybe, but it is very much the truth. They appear to be modern with all of the money being spent on new construction and trying to interact with the rest of the world in recent years, but some of the most powerful people who make the decisions about the way things get done will probably always cling to the old ways. That's the only way they know how to survive."

"That's sad."

"Sad, but probably necessary, for now. Look at what happens when outsiders go to one of their countries to try to change the way they live. All hell breaks loose because their people only know how to survive under the rule of a dictator. Everything breaks down without someone ruling with an iron hand. From my experience dealing with them, they could ever learn to trust each other well enough to get along and make the compromises it would take to coexist without a war breaking out every other week."

"Did you ever think you would learn so much about politics before? Being associated with royalty sort of makes it a necessary evil."

"I hate politics! It may be a way of life, I mean, I understand that we have to have someone making rules fit to live by, but from what I have seen of it, greed and corruption keeps bringing out the worst in anyone who lives by it."

"Well, I have gotten to know a lot of our politicians over the years because of Dad's business affairs in Edmonton. There are still some good ones out there, Amy, but it is hard to survive in that world and not be tough, and I admit that I have seen some things I am uncomfortable with as well."

"Yes, but imagine how differently those politicians would behave if they knew they had supreme rule over everyone and their people knew if they were too outspoken against the government that bad things are just expected to happen to them and their families."

"I'm glad we at least try to do better than that!" Liz was obviously disturbed at having to face the hidden reality that she had interacted with someone who actually held those beliefs and she hadn't seen it in him. "But, I don't get why you fear Ahmed after his downfall? Do you think he still has the power to take out any hostilities he feels…, especially toward you, being here in Canada?"

Amy had gotten into describing the misfortune of her coworkers, Aleah and Rasha, the previous evening in the guest cabin and the fate she feared they each had met, as well as the others she had learned about from Alberto San Nicolas. She went farther into her personal setback by describing the way Ahmed had tried to take control of her life, the ready supply of prescription pain killers, the attack that could have added her to the list of ill-fated victims, and the political fallout that resulted from the aftermath of the incident that left the prince on the outs with the ruling council of his country.

Liz sat up straight, her jaw slacked in amazement, "I guess you never know what someone else's challenges are. I had no idea things had gotten that far out of hand for you. I wish I could have been a better friend and would have known how to help you back then. I feel terrible."

"It's not your fault. It's no one else's fault but my own. My own family doesn't even know the full extent of it. I've been too embarrassed to tell them how stupid I was."

"You were not stupid, Amy. You were just unprepared to handle someone, something like you were faced with. That's on top of being unhealthy and trying to deal with not being well all by yourself. You should tell them, Amy. If not for yourself, for them. If he is really that dangerous, he could be a threat to them as well."

"You're right. I need to quit denying that this is really happening and tell them. I just hope they believe me."

"Just be honest, that's all you can do. I will bet you will be surprised by how much they believe in you when push comes to shove."

"Thanks. I needed to hear that."

"So, what about Ty? I can tell from the way you still speak of him that you loved him a lot. Do you honestly believe that it is too late to make peace with him?"

Feeling embattled and wanting to find a way to move on from the mess that felt like it might never go away, Amy spent another half hour offering details of the aftermath of her breakup with Ty and the events that it had set in motion. She continued with the story of having to meet Ty's new girlfriend and her daughter at Heartland and going on the trail ride that completely caught her off guard and had changed the way she saw things, both in Ty and Charlie, as well as in herself. Amy finished with sharing the terror of nearly blowing a hole in Ty's chest with her new pistol when he unexpectedly rode out to her campsite so late the next evening.

"It must have been very strange to have that talk with Ty and deal with his new…, situation, so soon after you got back home, after all that has happened. It sounds like you still miss him very much."

"I do, I miss him so much, but there is nothing left to do but to stay far enough away to let him figure out how to make it in his new life the best he can."

"So, tell me, what do you think of…, this Charlie? You seem to be cutting her more slack than most exes would."

Amy shrugged and elaborated further, "My sister has a five year old daughter and she and Charlie's daughter have become best friends since Ty started bringing Sammy over to my grandpa's ranch to teach the girls how to ride."

"You mean, you are in contact with all of them now?"

"Crazy, I know, but yes, I see them often. Ty has his hands full with working so many hours at his vet clinic and taking care of Charlie, so I take care of Sammy and Katie myself when I can. They are a lot more fun to be around than I expected. I love to watch them while they are learning about new things. It's pretty cool to see how excited they get."

"And Charlie, you mentioned that she is really sick?

"She is very sick," Amy nodded thoughtfully, feeling remorse for the ill-stricken woman regardless of the circumstances under which they had met. "The doctors have told her she doesn't have long to live and I can see it myself. She stopped the treatments a few weeks ago because she wanted to be there for her daughter and do things with her as long as she could. They were trying some experimental study for her treatment and she says it was not working and was just too much for her. She decided fighting her cancer in the clinical trial was making her so weak that the old fashioned way would be better, just to let nature take its course and manage the pain as well as she can."

"Ty is really taken with Sammy so much that he still wants to adopt her? Obviously, if the girl's mom dies, he will be on his own with raising her? Do you think he is capable of being a single parent after being single all of his life, and with the way he was raised?"

"Yes, I do. Sammy is a beautiful little girl and is as smart as she can be. She's precious, Liz, and she has Ty wrapped around her little finger already. You would have to know him like I do to get it, but he is different from any of the other guys I have met. He's the kind of guy who makes up his mind to do something he believes in and then finds a way to make it happen, somehow, some way. Ty knows what it feels like grow up scared, hungry, and needing a family to love him. He has his heart set on protecting her from the same upbringing he had and doing the best he can to give her a chance in life, to never let her have to feel scared and alone, and that's exactly what he is going to do."

"Where does all of this leave you, Amy? What do you want out of life now that so many things have changed?"

The thought had worn her down to the resignation that whatever came next in her life, it was going to be slow going, and carefully thought out, because there was not enough room for any more serious mistakes, "It leaves me with needing to get on the road back home. I have a long drive ahead of me, so I'd better get started."

* * *

After one more quick walkthrough of her room and buttoning up her suitcase, Amy met the gathering of new friends which had encircled the front door of the massive estate house to see off their guest, exchanging hugs and thanking the new consultant for her input into the new stable project. "Be sure to save time to come back in about six weeks. We should have something for you to see by then," J. D. said. "I want you to come and see if we are staying on track."

Glad to feel a part of something again, Amy agreed, "You can count on it."

Bob presented Amy with a cooler full of his best cuts and offered to strap it securely in the bed of her truck. Liz accompanied the other two and watched as the proud chef closed the tailgate, "As promised, Miss Amy, here is something for you to remember your trip."

"Thank you, Bob. I will make sure to share a little bit of your championship winning sauce with everybody back home, but not too much!"

"My sauce ain't won anything yet, Amy, but I'm hopin'."

"Yes you have, Bob, they just don't know it yet!"

Amy hugged the chef for his kindness and turned to Liz and said, "Thank you, for everything. It meant a lot to have someone to talk to. You're the best!"

"We will keep in touch. I will make sure of that." She then leaned in to whisper to her embattled friend, "Tell them!"

Amy nodded, affirming that she knew the meaning, and turned to pop open the door of her truck. "Goodbye! Thanks to you all for taking such good care of me this week," and gave a big waive to the ones left standing by the house.

"Drive safe!" Hallie smiled behind a waive as the traveler set off on the long trip to southwestern Alberta.

Spending so many long hours alone in the cab of a truck was enough time to let the mind wonder to every corner of her thoughts, leaving nothing unexplored, if yet unsolved. There had even been a proposal to consider, that she should think about moving up north to oversee setting up the new stables and finish getting the operation up and running, and if she felt she was up to the task, to manage it for the family after it was ready to take on client's horses. It would be a huge undertaking, another life-changing decision to deal with, and it left her wondering if she was ready to once again make so bold of a move so soon after coming home with her dreams in shambles and her physical and mental health still on the mend. At least she felt more secure in the people she would have to deal with this time, no more of a threat to take over her life, or worse.

As much as the trip had helped both her bank account and the need to get out of Hudson for a while to get her mind off Ty and Charlie's wedding this weekend, thoughts of home and finding a new normal were going to be the next step in the road to her recovery.

The Friday night lights of Hudson were just beginning to poke through a fading sunset on the horizon as the weeklong trip wound down. Amy stretched in her seat and finished off the last of the coffee in her travel mug as the four-hour drive across the northern prairie was about all she wanted behind the steering wheel of her new Dodge 4x4 truck this evening, having taken an extra thirty minutes in Red Deer to stop at a favorite diner owned by an old roping buddy she knew from her days competing in local rodeos to do a bit of catching up on the way home.

Passing through town on the first night of the weekend, Amy noticed all the high school kids beginning to exercise their socializing skills. It had to have been a hundred years ago, she and Soraya riding around in Jessie Stanton's Jeep trying to look cool enough to fit in with all of his privileged friends, and decided that she would be glad not to go through those awkward times again.

Ty had saved her from all of that, being the one to come to her rescue when Jessie had decided their relationship needed to move to the next step, one she was not ready for. The memory of the new ranch hand crashing Jessie's party and ending up punching the spoiled boy's face when he got too amorous after a few too many beers than the under aged teen could handle, and walking home in a huff in freezing weather only to have Ty come along and talk her into taking her first ride in his old antique truck, soon to discover that it had no heat as she had hoped to warm up from the chill she had gotten.

The range roads were her stomping ground. Wide open spaces and views of the Rockies peeking through the hills and trees here and there to remind her how fortunate she was to be raised in this place were reward enough, she supposed. How many memories was she going to have to learn to put on the shelf? What would she do to make new ones, and with whom?

So many questions rolled around in her head, one memory feeding another, the yearning for settling down and moving forward commanding all of her attention. The driver's heart skipped a beat when the unexpected flash of tail lights at the bottom of the next hill startled her out of her yearning, dust boiling out of the deep gorge beside it, and what seemed to be a dim light straining to shine through from the bottom. No sooner had she realized what was happening, the vehicle on the road bolted away adding to the dust cloud and disappeared over the next hill as she cautiously slowed to see what had apparently gone off the side of the road. There was a new military grade flashlight in the glove compartment, a gift from her dad to keep her safe in case she needed it in her new truck, and she reached for it, fumbling to find the button to turn on the light, and shined it down into the deep crevice to see what was there.

It took a few seconds for the bright light to cut through the dust. She opened the door of her truck and walked to the edge of the guard rail and waited until an image began to appear, and when she saw what lay at the bottom of the ravine a roar of panic inside her body amplified the shrill scream piercing her ears, " _TY!_ "

 _To be continued_


	48. Chapter 48

CHAPTER 48

Amy leaned as far as she dared over the old wooden guard rail trying to locate the driver of the mangled truck, if in fact he was still inside. The cloud of dust hovering over the scene was only made worse by a fountain of hot steam spewing from a broken radiator, dense enough to make it difficult even for the powerful flashlight to cut through the haze and reveal the answers she desperately needed. A shuddering chill coursed through her veins at the realization that the man who was once the most important step in the rest of her life may well have been thrown clear of the accident and left her frantically scanning above the wreckage to see if she could spot him hanging helplessly on the rocky bank. Time after time she screamed his name into the darkness, each panicking plea unanswered, and her hands shook so badly as she reached into her pocket for her phone that she let it slip out of her fingers and bounce on the gravel road at her feet. To her relief it stayed lit, functioning well enough to fumble through pushing 911 on the keyboard and begging a calming first responder for help.

After ending the call to the rescue squad, Amy's first thought was that she needed to call her grandfather and tell him Ty was in trouble, knowing that he would be here in only a few minutes since the ranch was a mere two kilometers farther down the road. Her mind was running away with horrible thoughts of the unknown and the calming, no nonsense manner of the older man was what she needed to keep her emotions from making her completely ineffective and a sure bet for having the answers in knowing what to do to help the man who had become such a big part of their family. "Grandpa! Ty's had an accident! His truck is off the side of Third Creek Bridge and he isn't answering when I call out to him. I can't tell if he is still inside or if he was thrown out somehow. I can't see him anywhere! Please come and help me!" Pausing a moment to clear the terror out of her voice, "I am going to go down there and see if I can find him. I have no idea if he was alone or if…, Oh God! What if Sammy was with him?"

"Amy, calm down! Ty was just here a few minutes ago and he was alone, spoke to him myself, so you don't need to worry about anybody else being in the truck with him. You say you can't see him anywhere?"

"NO! Grandpa, I can't tell where he is! There's a lot of dust and smoke from the engine. He isn't answering me! I don't know what to do!"

"Hold on Amy, _don't panic_. That will only keep you from thinking straight and being able to help him. I will be there as quick as I get my boots on. Be careful, you don't know what's down there. Maybe you'd better wait for me to go down to the wreck with you."

"No! I have to find him! He is bound to be hurt and he needs help, NOW!" she said forcefully, flinging her free hand upward in frustration. Instinctively, she knew she had to move and shoved the phone in her pocket without pushing the end call button as she once again scanned the darkness for any hope of Ty's survival.

A new feeling of hope grew all through her spirit with a surge of comforting reassurance in knowing her grandpa would soon be there to help.

Unable to stand by idly as each second seemed like an eternity, Amy's feet became restless and carried her all the way to the far end of the bridge's barrier. She combed over the terrain for a way down the rocky bank with the powerful light in her hand flashing randomly from side to side assessing the possibility of footing stable enough to hold her as she made her way toward the bottom. Rock by rock, the determined rescuer tested each step, calling out every few seconds and looking around if for nothing more than to let him to know he was not alone if he could hear her.

It seemed like an hour had passed before she finally made it close enough to see inside the twisted truck. It had come to rest on its passenger side between two large boulders and hung perilously above another ledge that would have sent the vehicle and its occupant into the dark waters of the narrow creek. Tears streaked down her cheeks for the first time when she saw the rumpled shape lying unresponsive on top of some strange plastic looking thing covering the passenger's door, "Ty!" she screamed for the hundredth time, the lack of response now having a visual repercussion.

Try as she might, the driver's side door proved to be too heavy for her to lift straight up after she successfully got the latch to release, and upon looking closer at her options, she could not determine a way she could have kept from landing on the victim if in fact she had been able to climb inside from above him. The agony of helplessness burned inside her, but the sound of an approaching vehicle caught her attention and she raised the flashlight upward into the night to try and signal to the driver where she needed help.

Jack slid his old four by four to a stop as Lou leapt out of her side even before the truck stopped rolling, running toward the light. "Amy! Amy, where are you? Have you found Ty?"

Jack got out of the old Chevy as quickly as his tired body would allow, and yelled to Lou, "Can you see her? Do you see the truck?"

"Amy?" Lou was screaming as well by now, but she saw the light shine from the bottom as her sister waived it back and forth to get her attention.

"I'm here, Lou! Ty is still inside the truck but I can't get to him! He's not responding at all!"

"Don't move, Amy, we will be there in just a second!" More worse for wear than he wished he was at times like this, the aging rancher did his best to pick his way down the steep bank following behind his oldest granddaughter who wasted no time in reaching her sister to see what she could do to help.

The two anxious women waited for their grandfather to make it down to where Amy still clutched the door of the old blue truck so tightly that her fingers had gone numb. "He's down there, see!" shining the light inside the cab.

Lou immediately pulled the door up, strengthened by pure adrenalin and what was left of Amy's tired assistance, and attempted to climb up to the open door and gain entry into the steaming cab of the truck.

"Wait!" Jack hollered as he grabbed Lou by the back of her belt, fearing that too much movement could send the truck an everybody inside over the edge. "OK, here's what we need to do…," the cool headed cowboy said, having had plenty of experience at seeing his share of bad situations over the years, "Watch your eyes, you two, I'm going to take this rock and break the windshield so I can get to him from the front. Just hold the light against the roof, Amy, so as not to blind me while I try to get him out. If he's not hurt too bad to move, I should be able to pull him through, but Lou, I may need your help, so be ready. Just don't jostle the truck around while we are in there, OK?"

Both girls nodded, assuring the more focused grandfather that they understood what he was asking of them. Being second nature to have a pair of work gloves stuffed in his back pocket, Jack slid them on his callused hands and clutched the stone with a firm grip, taking two hard strikes against the already broken glass before it shattered into a million pieces. He raked the rim of the opening in order to remove as many remaining sharp edges as he could before crawling inside to hover over the unconscious man lying motionless in the bright light coming from above. Tossing a glove aside, the nervous rescuer put a finger on the victim's neck, "He's got a pulse…, and his breathing is good. I can hear the sirens coming and the truck seems stable where it is, so I think it might be better to leave it to the first response folks to move him."

Fringing on hysteria, Amy took the reluctance of the experienced older man as meaning he thought Ty might be hurt worse than she had hoped and rejected letting the man she loved just lay there without the help he needed so badly, "No! Grandpa! We have to get him out of there!"

"Amy, if I cover him up with my coat, that will warm him up a little. That's about all I think I should do right now. I would hate to think I hurt him any worse than he already is if I tried to wrestle him out without the proper equipment, and I ain't as young as I used to be."

A flurry of activity ascended from road above as Amy waived the flashlight again to signal their position in the dark void below the bridge.

The rescue workers teamed up and hurried to position the board at the base of the windshield opening and gently, slowly, carefully, maneuvered Ty onto its protective shell and strapped him tightly in position. After securing his neck to restrict movement, the team picked their way upward to the road and awaiting family leaning over the bridge's barrier silently urging them to move as quickly as possible, now joined by the flashing lights of a local RCMP who had arrived to investigate the incident as soon as the rescue was completed. When they finally reached the top, another pair of ambulance personnel lifted the stretcher onto a gurney and hustled the victim inside the awaiting ambulance to begin the procedures necessary to stabilize the patient before securing him for transport to the Bow Valley Medical Center, the closest trauma ready facility in the area.

"Ty!" Amy pleaded one more time to the unconscious patient, her grandfather catching her before she could run to him.

"Amy, this man needs to talk to you first."

"Hello, Miss Fleming? I am Sergeant Quesnay. I understand that you may have some information about what happened here?"

"Wait! I'm going with him!" the agitated woman yelled out as the ambulance attendant started to close the door.

"I only saw tail lights sitting beside where Ty went over the edge of the road when I came over that hill," pointing toward the direction from which she had come. "The truck, I think it may have been an SUV, was parked right here. It took off, that way, when they saw me coming. I didn't see what color or anything like that, it was too dark and dusty. Look, I have to go. You can see me at the hospital if you have any more questions."

"Do you think this may not have been an accident?"

A stern warning came from the ambulance, "Miss, we have to go, NOW!"

"I don't know, but I wouldn't rule that out," Amy glanced toward Lou, seeing the suspicion rising in her eyes as her reluctant sister spoke, then broke into a run just in time to squeeze through the closing door of the ambulance.

"Amy? Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Lou! It's Ty! What do you think I am going to do? Just call Charlie and tell her what has happened!"

The heavy stainless steel door clanked shut and Amy took a seat beside the medical attendant as she went about her business trying to see if she could get a response from the patient. Vital signs checked and wounds cleaned for bandages, the attentive woman finished writing the results down on the form on her clipboard and used the radio to inform the emergency room of the patient's information. After hanging the microphone on its hook the woman relaxed a bit and began to share with the anxious passenger what she had discovered up to that point, "His vitals are reasonably strong, considering what he has been through," she assured the worried passenger who nodded in relief. "This nasty bump on his forehead was probably caused by impacting the windshield during the crash. We will need to check for internal bleeding and…,"

Amy nervously interrupted, "I've had a little experience with head trauma myself, so I know what you need to do. Just take care of him, please!"

"Absolutely! He is in good hands now. He looks like a strong young man so I expect that he is a fighter and…,"

"Amy? What…, where am I?"

"Ty! Thank God!"

"Ty? I am Nurse Payne. You have been in an accident and had a pretty big bump on the head. Since you are back with us so soon, that's a good sign. Just lie still and we will have you at the hospital before you know it and get you checked out more thoroughly."

"What happened? The last thing I remember was talking to Jack and…," the woozy patient tried thinking, but a sharp stabbing sensation went through his right temple and made him pause until the shooting pain subsided.

"Take it easy, Ty. Grandpa told me you two had talked not long before the accident. He was the first one to get to you to help."

"My truck!" His memory clearing up and filling in a few sketchy details, the realization that the first substantial possession in his self-made life was probably a total loss.

"Don't worry about your truck. Grandpa will have the tow truck take it back to the ranch as soon as the police finish with the accident scene. He said he would put it inside the Quonset barn and to tell you it would be there for whenever you felt like coming to see it."

"How bad is it? I hit pretty hard."

His understanding friend wisely chose to divert his attention to details leading up to the accident, "Do you remember what happened?" Amy asked, surprised that he had his faculties so well under control so soon after being rendered unconscious.

"Yeah, I remember this car coming up from behind me really fast, and then when he got behind me he turned on his bright lights and wasted no time in pulling up beside me. I moved over to let him go by and for some reason he just put his front fender against my truck and started pushing me off the road. I turned to the left but my pickup was lighter in the back than his SUV and it got me completely sideways. The last thing I remember was going off the side of the road. It's killed, isn't it?"

"Your truck? Well, it was dark so I couldn't tell…,"

"Don't sugar coat it, Amy. My truck is ruined, isn't it?"

The idea that his priorities had shifted to the antique truck while his own personal wellbeing was still in question perplexed Amy as she tried to sort out the new information, "I honestly don't know, Ty! It's dark and there was a lot of dust and steam…., Do you honestly think I would be worried about your stupid truck when I found you lying inside it and not answering me when I was screaming at you?"

Shocked at herself that she would react so sharply at her longtime friend, especially under these circumstances, Amy quickly apologized, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be so, I don't know, _worried_ _about_ _you_ so much instead of the condition of your truck right now." Taking another pause to recollect her composure and remind herself of the connection Ty had with the first meaningful possession he ever owned, "We can fix your truck later, whenever you feel up to it. I'm sorry that I called it stupid. You know I love that truck as much as you do. Look, Grandpa will be better suited to give you a full report tomorrow when he has a chance to look it over, but let's get you checked out to see what needs to be done to get _you_ better first, OK?"

The attendant had listened to the exchange and surmised there was far more than any casual connection going on between the two, "Amy, is it?"

"Yes, Amy Fleming. Thank you for taking care of my hard headed friend here."

"Amy Fleming…, it really IS you!" she looked up and smiled, "I went to one of your horse starting events a few years ago. You were amazing!"

"Thanks. Boy, that was a long time ago."

"Yes, it was. I admired what you were doing so much, kicking that showoff Chase Power's ass at his own game like that, and I have followed your career as well as one can through the papers and equine magazines I subscribe to. I thought you might just move to Europe for good with all the success you had during the Equestrian Games tour. It was so amazing to see you take that prince's team and…"

"Yeah, well, sometimes things seem different on the outside when you are looking in….," the reluctant celebrity cut off the awkward reference.

The interruption was obvious to the admirer and a light came on inside her memory, "I remember! I remember you mentioned your boyfriend that day in the ring with the colt you gentled…, and this is Ty! I'm so sorry! I'm afraid I might have stepped in something…,"

"It's nothing to worry about," Amy assured her. That's all water under the bridge. All that matters now is to make sure he is going to be OK."

Taking the hint at sensing unsettled matters she may have stirred up, the nurse redirected her attention, "but as for Ty here, I would say that since he is in the back of an ambulance on his way to the hospital and more worried about his truck than a knot the size of a melon on top of his head, then we might be looking pretty good as to how he is coming along right now."

"Good! All of us at home already knew how hard his head was, so…,"

"Hey! I'm right here!"

"Ty, I need you to take it easy for me, OK? We will be at the hospital in about ten minutes, so it won't be long until we can get you looked at. I would count on the doctor having you spend at least tonight under observation, though, just to be sure."

"Charlie! She doesn't know?"

"I had Lou call her as soon as we got you loaded up and on the way. So she will be there by the time the doctors are finished looking you over."

"The wedding… That's going to kill her if we have to put it off…,"

"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it, OK? Let's get through tonight first, then you can work all of that out later."

Trying to sort out his new circumstances, Ty moaned as pain pierced through his temples when the ambulance rocked back and forth over the driveway entrance to the emergency room.

"We're here," Amy took his hand in hers, reassuring him that the help he needed was now available, maybe for her own comfort as much as the man whose hand she held.

 _To be continued_


	49. Chapter 49

CHAPTER 49

Seldom did anything keep Amy Fleming sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time. The need to be on the move was a personal attribute that had helped to make her successful in many endeavors over the years, but had become one of the things that she had targeted to try and take better control of in her life. Bar Bilson had been guiding her, pointing out the reasons her wellbeing had suffered because of never learning to experience contentment when things were in a good place, teaching her patient how to enjoy the moment.

Hyperactive by her very nature, something, anything, needed to be found to keep her busy enough to avert inactivity lest she might go stir crazy. Attempting to force a calm upon herself was failing miserably and she knew there would be none for her tonight. Memories of the times that had been good and the people she had shared them with haunted her, raising the question if she honestly believed she would be lucky enough to have another chance at someday finding happiness, contentment…, or love.

A cart full of leftovers from the evening rounds of meals rattled down the hallway on its way back to the kitchen, distracting the weary keeper of the otherwise empty emergency room from a magazine article challenging the ethics of cloning thoroughbreds she had almost finished. The annoyance soon became absorbed in the bustle of footsteps, voices, and beeping from countless electronic devices that are a part of waiting room duty in any hospital. She could not help thinking how much of a coincidence it was, having been through the emergency room routine more than her fair share of times and having almost always been unconscious during those situations, being reminded how unpleasant it was to be on this side of a trauma for a change with all the noise and antiseptic smells permeating every square inch of the place, but but the waiting, that is what she hated most.

"Amy? There you are!" Charlie's voice called out from the doorway, out of breath from being in a hurry to discover her fiancé's status. "Lou told us that you were here with Ty. Do you know how bad he's hurt?"

Clint grasped his granddaughter's elbow for support as she took the few steps necessary to approach her friend, clearly upset and spent from exceeding her reserve for physical exertion, and Amy stood for a supportive hug before assisting the older man in lowering his granddaughter into a chair, noticing a perceptible downturn in her condition since she had last seen her.

Charlie searched into Amy's eyes for the answers she needed, apprehensively bracing herself for another setback to the necessarily critical schedule she was trying her best to keep, her hands clutching onto her friend's stable forearm for support.

"He is going to be OK, Charlie," Amy reassured her, and then scoffed, "At least I would think as much being his first reaction to waking up in the back of an ambulance strapped to a gurney was to ask about his truck."

"He was conscious, then?" The older man asked, relieved at the first sign of good news.

"Yes. Ty woke up about half way to the hospital. The nurse told me that his vitals were looking as good as could be expected. The doctor gave him a quick check over as soon as we got here and winked at me and said, "Don't worry, we got this!" just before they wheeled him to the back of the ER, like he didn't think Ty's condition was serious. They are doing a more thorough check now, of course, but if there isn't any internal bleeding or other surprises that come up the nurse told me to expect that the doctor would have Ty stay the night for observation just to be sure and monitor his progress, and if we are lucky, he could be released as early as tomorrow morning."

Clint let out a sigh, "That's good news, Amy! Good news!"

Nodding in agreement, willing command of a potentially explosive meltdown, Charlie offered a heartening smile, "Yes, it is. Now I just need the doctor to come out and tell me that he's going to be OK for sure." Changing the course of the conversation, "Lou told me all she knew about what had happened at the time she called. She mentioned something about your seeing tail lights on the road above the accident when you happened upon it?"

Having given careful thought as to how she might explain why they were all sitting in a hospital waiting room on the eve of the bride's biggest day, Amy took a breath before calmly recounting her discovery of the accident scene and spent all the time needed to cover details up to the time Ty was taken to the examination room.

"Thank you for finding him, Amy, and making sure he is safe. God knows what could have happened to him if you hadn't come along when you did. He could have been there all night before someone found him if you hadn't been there," her mind racing with horrible scenarios, "or if you had been a minute later, you may have driven right past him without even knowing he was down in that ravine."

Amy could tell the worried fiancée needed to hear calming words right then and did her best to help comfort her fears, "Well, thankfully, the timing was right and I found him. That's all that matters."

Clint listened to Amy's account and realized a few pieces of the puzzle were still missing, "But, do you know what really happened? Why he ran off the road? Why would someone see the accident and just leave like that?"

"Okay, I think I should tell you that I do have concerns about the reason for the accident." Drained from hiding what she had previously feared might be considered by others as nothing more than silly suspicions, Amy heeded the advice of her friend in Edmonton and clarified her reasoning, especially now that Liz's prediction that others could be in danger as well had turned out to be not such a far-fetched idea anymore, "You see, I have had the feeling that someone has been following me for a while now. I didn't know for sure until the other day when I was on my way home from Canmore after picking up a client's skitzy horse and noticed someone staying back farther than I would have expected on the range road near home. I was going slow because the horse had been in a trailering accident and would get riled up quickly if he got jostled around. Usually, a car will catch up to me and pass on by, but this time they just stayed back. I got a weird feeling about it, so I stopped just to see what they would do, not far from where Ty went off the road tonight, in fact. When they stopped too, staying a ways behind me, and waited until I started moving again, I knew something was off about it. The next thing I knew, they just disappeared. There have been other times I had that feeling, but I never could find a reason to believe that it wasn't just my imagination playing tricks on me. The feeling is getting stronger lately. It's hard to explain, but that is why I have started carrying a gun or always having it close by now, just in case I wasn't imagining it and something should happen."

Clint had difficulty in following the idea of someone intentionally threatening people that he cared about, "My God, Amy! Who would want to hurt you? You're the Miracle Girl, for God's sakes! And Ty? Why would they want to hurt him, if that's where you are going with this?"

This part of the speculation made Amy extremely uneasy with sharing, fearful of giving anyone she let in on her theory the idea that she had gone completely paranoid, but something was evidently going on to support her growing suspicions and she thought it was high time to make sure everyone who could be affected by Ahmed or his loyal security staff would be prepared to take precautions, just in case it turned out to be a reality.

Before she had the chance to finish with her explanation, Sergeant Quesnay appeared through the door, "Miss Fleming? Have you received any news? It sounds like Mr. Borden's injuries were not as serious as they could have been, so you shouldn't have to worry too much."

"Thank you for asking, but, yes, I think Ty is going to be OK. Oh, Sergeant Quesnay, this is Clint and Charlene McCrary. Charlene is Ty's fiancée. They are supposed to be getting married tomorrow."

"I am sorry that something like this has happened at such a time, Ma'am."

"Thank you Sergeant. Do you know any more about the accident and what caused it?"

"That is why I am here, to follow up with Miss Fleming about what she saw at the scene." Gesturing toward the far end of the otherwise empty waiting room, 'Why don't we go right over here so we can talk about what you saw in more detail, please?"

"Sure." Amy agreed, and nodded to the other two that she would be back soon.

It took longer than the witness expected. Diligent investigating by the Sergeant as he jotted down notes, leading to more questions, had taken up another thirty minutes because of the typical cut and dried highway accident report suddenly becoming more complicated. Ty's doctor stepped into the waiting room and cut the interview short, "I have good news, Miss Fleming…,"

Amy stopped him by holding up a hand, "Wait, Dr.," wanting to fill the busy man in with the patient's family details so he would include the other anxious visitors into the conversation after making the proper introductions.

The doctor continued, "Let's see…, Ty has a nasty bump on the upper right side of his forehead, likely from impacting the windshield, and another two right about here, and here, from being tossed around inside the vehicle," pointing to his own scalp as a reference. "We gave him some medication to help with the pain tonight. I wrote a prescription for you to pick up at the pharmacy to keep the pain under control for the remainder of the week should he need it, and we have applied some cold compresses to help with swelling. I am going to keep Ty overnight for observation, just to be sure he remains stable, but if he holds up like I think he will, he should be out of here in the morning, as soon as I have had a chance to check him over one more time to insure we caught everything before turning him over to your care. I recommend that you all don't work him too hard right away. He should rest as much as possible for at least a couple more days."

"Of course, Dr., I will see to that myself," Clint said, specifically addressing his impatient granddaughter with a raised eyebrow.

"Grandpa!" The bride in waiting looked irritated that her grandfather would think she would push Ty too far because of the wedding, "We are all going to take care of Ty, Doctor, no matter what this old man may lead you to believe."

"Good! Listen, everyone, it's a bit past visiting hours, but I have told the night nurse to give you a few minutes. She won't throw you out if you want to go see him now."

"Thank you, Doc," Clint spoke for all those present, "We won't be too long."

Charlie looked sympathetically to Amy who had stepped away to return to the interview with the Sergeant, "You should come too. That's the least we could offer after all you have done for us tonight."

"Oh, I would love to, but I still have to finish here first, then I am headed to bed as fast as I can get to it. It's been a long week away from home and I am struggling to stay awake."

The Sergeant replied, "That's OK, Miss Fleming. I think I have all I need except a number that I can reach you if anything else comes up."

After writing down the required information, the officer excused himself and walked out the door.

"Didn't you come here in the ambulance?" Clint reminded the worn-out cowgirl.

"Aw, crap! I forgot all about that!"

"We can drop you off on our way home," he smiled and put his hand at her back. "C'mon, let's go see how Ty is holding up."

"Are you sure? I mean, I should wait until you have had a chance to see him first, don't you think?"

Charlie released one of her hands from her grandfather's arm and curled it inside her friend's elbow. "Nonsense, Amy! You deserve to be here with us. I want you to know that is the way we feel about it." Then, pinching her lips, the ailing woman asked, "I hope you don't mind lending me a hand, Amy. I seem to need a steady shoulder to lean on tonight. I'm really glad you are here with us."

The gesture was simple enough, but Amy felt the implication sinking in. The acceptance from someone who could just as well have been a mortal enemy offering another reminder that things should be civil between them had a humbling effect, and she knew there was more than this awkward circumstance at stake for all of them.

Amy stayed close to the doorway just inside the room in case things got too uncomfortable and watched Charlie lean in to hunt for a safe place to kiss the bruised patient on his cheek, noticing her nearly buckle at the knees from distress, or weakness, she wasn't sure which. As Charlie's grandfather caught her and helped position the emotional wedding eve bride upon the bed at Ty's side, Amy realized how far the outgoing, energetic, beautiful mother of a precious little girl had declined in health, and now had a fuller understanding about the pressure she must be under to try and make them all a family as soon as possible.

Feeling groggy and trying to focus on the woman beside him, Ty hadn't noticed the other woman lingering at his door, "Hey, I'm going to be OK. We are going to be OK," he said as he tenderly brushed his fingers along her cheek.

Sometimes the simplest things sneak up on you and hit you the hardest, and seeing the man she had learned to love and trust offering comfort to someone else when he was the one everyone should be worried about caused Amy's heart to ache again, thinking of all the times he had been the one to comfort her when he was the one who had been in pain or fighting back against heartbreaking news, another regret to carry in knowing she had given him reason to lose hope for her, and for them.

"Do you know what they did with my truck?"

A silent split second became a confusing guffaw from the shaky fiancée and her grandfather. He wasn't sure if he should be laughing with them or pissed, his face in perplexed conflict at being the cause of amusement of everyone in the room, including the third person he had just noticed at the door attempting to choke down a guilty chuckle from the inside joke evidently shared between the three visitors.

After explaining about her grandpa taking the truck back to Heartland, again, "Why don't you just concentrate on getting better for a change. You have a wedding to get to tomorrow."

Clint jumped in as the voice of reason, "Oh, I don't think…,"

"Just hear me out," Amy resisted, "If Ty is well enough to be released tomorrow morning, maybe it isn't so much of a stretch to think about going through with the wedding, even if we have to push it back an hour or two to get everybody ready."

"But you heard what the Doc said…," Clint persisted.

"Yes, I did, but it isn't like he has to do anything strenuous. Let's see how it goes tomorrow morning and if the doctor releases him, he can rest until it's time to get ready."

"I don't know about this, girls," the older man spoke up. "Poor Ty, here, has had one hell of a night. I think we might be pushing things a little bit too fast to try to pull off a wedding tomorrow. He's going to look like hell, you know, with all the bruises and bumps…. And _you_ are going to be looking for anything on your body that _don't_ hurt. Trust me, I know," giving Ty a warning about his body's reaction to being tossed around like a load of laundry in spin cycle.

"Just be thinking about the possibility," Amy defended her idea. "I happen to know that the groom is pretty tough, for a city guy, and when he wants something badly enough, he has a way of finding a way to make it work."

"Ty, what do you have to say about all of this?" Clint asked. "Don't think we wouldn't understand if you want to wait."

"Amy's right." The groom weighed in, "Let's at least wait on postponing the wedding to see if I can move tomorrow, and then, if we can find a way to keep me from looking like a bad Halloween stunt, I would like to go ahead and do this." Ty reached up to brush a tear away from his fiancée's cheek, looked to Clint to show that he really did want to try, and then looked to see Amy, still beside the door, relying on the time tested silent communication to tell her 'thank you,' and feeling the warmth of an old connection that he once thought might have been gone forever.

"All right, ladies, he ain't gonna get any rest with all of this squawking going on in his room. Get some shut eye, Ty, and we can talk about this tomorrow morning," Clint agreed, still thinking they had not seen the end of the aftereffects of the young man's crash and how it might alter his enthusiasm when they caught up with him.

* * *

Amy sat in the back seat of the ample sized 8S Ranch dually and listened to the driver and front seat passenger go back and forth about how to pull off such an unlikely event. Staying quiet, being the outsider, she could see both sides of the argument, but when Charlie turned around to ask, "What made _you_ think of going ahead with the wedding, Amy? I know you must have something on your mind to speak up like that."

Having thought a lot about the things her riding partner had told her after the camping trip with the girls, Amy felt compelled to be honest since she believed it would be the way she would want to be treated if their positions were reversed, owing her stricken friend more respect than lying to her, and decided that it served no purpose to sugar coat the reasoning behind her suggestion, "How are you feeling, Charlie? I can see how hard it is for you to be here like this."

Clint's alert glance in the rearview mirror did not go unnoticed and the outsider braced herself for what most likely would be a sharp rebuttal from the protective grandfather.

"I'm not well, Amy," Charlie interrupted the pivotal silence, grasping a loving hand firmly onto the tearing up older man's forearm as he flexed a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. "My doctor told me Tuesday that, because of the way my disease has progressed, I would be lucky to make it long enough to see another Christmas. My only hope now is to get my family together and spend one Christmas…," her show of courage starting to waiver, "one damned Christmas…, is that too much to ask?" before finally breaking down, scared and disappointed by the harsh reality of her fate.

"No, it isn't." Amy leaned forward, her chin at the back of Charlie's seat, and took hold of the sobbing woman's shoulder. "You are going to have that Christmas, I just know it, and if I know Ty, you can count on him being there for you tomorrow. Don't worry, because whatever comes up, you can count on all of us being there too. You'll see."

 _To be continued_


	50. Chapter 50

CHAPTER 50

Amy could see lights in the living room from the rear seat of the 8S Ranch truck as it pulled to a stop in front of her home. As expected, her grandfather, Lisa, Lou, and Georgie were still waiting up and she could see them hurrying to peek through the kitchen window as she walked across the yard toward the front porch steps. Turning to give a quick wave of thanks to Clint and Charlie for the ride home, a dreadful chill crept through her as she watched them turn up the hill toward the entrance gate. The shiver consumed her, imagining herself in the dying woman's place and knowing she would soon be forced to leave unfinished all the good things in life that she had been working so hard to build just when they were all finally beginning to come together as she had always hoped they would.

Charlie's illness, inescapable and cruel in its nature, had imposed a sobering fate upon such a nice family, ' _How does she do it?'_ she thought. _'How can she keep making plans when she knows she may never see them come true?'_ Amy also knew their fate was soon to include the only man that had ever shown feelings of real love for her, at least the kind of love that only Ty could make her feel, and couldn't help but question one more time why a young man just starting out in his professional career would willingly put himself in the position of being caretaker to a family he had known such a short time and assume the daunting responsibility of raising a small child like Sammy on his own?

Ty's oldest friend knew why. Amy and her psychological counsellor had discussed it during her past sessions in Calgary when, teetering against the boundaries of doctor-patient privilege, Bar had explained to her that Ty's need to be loved and share those feelings was driven by the lack of nurturing from his parents while he was a small child and, as an adult, was his way of fighting back at those rooted resentments, to put himself in their place and do a better job than they had done for him.

There was a lot to work out in her head and the existing situation kept getting more complicated by the hour. Shaking herself out of the saddening reflections, she turned to face the loved ones now impatiently waiting on the front porch, accepted comforting hugs from them all before walking through the door, and kicked off her boots.

"How is he?" asked Georgie, and without leaving enough space for the downtrodden aunt to answer her niece, Jack stepped in, "Keepin' him overnight, I hear?"

"Yeah, he's banged up pretty bad so it didn't surprise me that the doctor wanted to keep him until morning. I'm just glad it he isn't hurt any worse than he is."

Enquiring about the news Lou had relayed from Amy when she called to tell them that she had found a ride home, Lisa asked, "What's this about going ahead with the wedding tomorrow? Is Charlie really going to push for that after all that has happened?"

"Actually, I am the one who suggested for them to try and go ahead with the wedding tomorrow." Amy removed her jacket and hung it on a wooden peg on the wall in the mud room, "Before you say anything about me minding my own business, I think you should know what I learned tonight…, about Charlie and how she is doing," Amy told them, preparing for the questions she had counted on.

Lou wrinkled a brow and asked, "What's that supposed to mean? You sound kind of worried."

"I am," quick to head off any further negativity before motioning to the others, "Follow me into the living room and we can talk about it after we sit down. I'm so tired I can't stand up another minute."

When she had gotten comfortable on the sofa, "Look, I wouldn't have said anything, it's obviously none of my business, but if you could have seen Charlie tonight you might not be so quick to judge me."

Jack drew upon his grandfatherly patience in trying not to be too hasty in his assessment of the situation, "We are not judging you, Amy, it's just that it doesn't make sense that they could even think of following through with the wedding tomorrow if Ty is all torn up from that crash like I would expect he is. I haven't forgotten what it is like to take a beating from one of those broncs and try to get out of bed the next day. I expect Ty will be stiff as a poker from head to toe by morning, not to mention looking like the tail end of hard times with all those cuts and bruises he is bound to have."

"Maybe he could wear a hat," Georgie suggested, evidently content that she was the one who had the answer to her friend's problem.

Lou laughed at the practical reasoning of her oldest daughter, "Georgie, you need to go on to bed. It's late."

Amy accepted a goodnight hug from her niece, "Thanks for waiting up so long for me to get home."

"Well, I had to see how Ty was before I could sleep. I'm glad he is going to be OK."

"Me too," Amy said as she watched her make her way up the stairs to her bedroom, and then turned around to explain to the others, "My suggestion was only to wait until morning to see how he is doing before making a final decision and if the doctor lets him go home they could talk about it then. If he can still get around OK, I honestly believe it would be best for them to go ahead with the wedding as soon as they can." She could see the shock in all their faces, understanding how odd it must seem to the family to hear her promoting Ty to be married to someone else when they understood she clearly had not gotten over losing her ex.

Still not buying into the push to go ahead with such an important ceremony under less than ideal circumstances, Lou asked, "What are you trying to say? Surely it would be better to take a week or two to get reorganized and let Ty recover a bit more before going through with the ceremony so soon after the accident."

"Lou, Charlie is fading really fast now. You should have seen her. She was so weak tonight that both Clint and I had to help her more than once to keep steady. It was shocking to see her that way, especially since it hadn't been all that long since I had last seen her. She seemed to be much better then. I thought she was OK for now, but I was wrong. I'm afraid if they don't have their wedding soon, and I mean _real_ soon, they may not be able to have it at all."

"I'm sure am sorry to hear that," said the older man as he slumped back into his chair. Having seen his own loved ones suffer through a similar fate, he continued, "I hadn't thought about her condition deteriorating so fast, and if that is the case, it has to be affecting Ty too."

Amy agreed. "I was so upset at seeing her like that that I felt like I should at least suggest for them to consider trying to have the ceremony tomorrow. Charlie told me on the way home tonight that her doctors have explained how much farther her cancer has spread through her body. She is determined to make it to Christmas, no matter what they say, and that is her hope now. Grandpa, I'm not sure she could wait another couple of weeks. I hate to say it, but I don't know how much longer she can hold out. I know they wanted to start proceedings for Ty to adopt Sammy after they are married, but the way it looks to me, they don't have any time to spare if they want to get it done while Charlie is still able to be a part of the process."

"Oh, Amy, I am so sorry," said Lou, putting a cheek against her dispirited younger sister as she gathered her into her arms. "I'm proud of you, though. That had to be hard for you to support them at such an awful time and I know how hard it must have been to get past your history with Ty to do that for them."

"It's not like I can take a magic wand and make everything that has happened between us just go away, but I feel like I owe it to Ty to try and support him if he wants to move on and bring Charlie and Sammy into his life. After the way things went for us, I am surprised that he will even speak to me again. It's the least I could do for him, and if this is the only way I can prove how much he means to me, then this is what I have to do. I have to let him go."

Jack interjected, "I gotta admit that you two have had about the most complicated courtship that I have ever seen. You are both a bit too stubborn for your own good, sometimes, but I know Ty loved you, Amy, and I think he still cares about you, to be honest. It's too bad it all had to come to this but he is doing what he feels like he needs to do, for Sammy as well as for Charlie."

A few seconds passed as fatigue from the long night collectively sapped the energy from the room, then Lisa thought to ask, "Did you talk to that Mountie about what you saw, that vehicle on the road by the accident?"

"Yes, I told him everything I saw, and everything I am worried about."

Everyone was puzzled at the comment, "Worried? What's worrying you, other than the obvious?" her grandfather asked.

While confessing her suspicions about the cause of the accident, Jack, Lisa, and Lou sat up on the edge of their seats as Amy told them what she feared to be a new threat from her former boss. Lou reacted like she always did about any news concerning a man for whom she made no bones about hiding any contempt, "I _knew_ that asshole wouldn't let it go! He's come back here to get even with you for screwing up his chance to be king and now he's hurt Ty because it!"

"We're not even sure about him being involved, not yet," the embarrassed former employee of Prince Ahmed al Saeed cautioned. "This is only a feeling I've had about being watched lately and I just think we all need to be more careful for a while, in case I'm right."

"I'm sorry Amy, Lou apologized. You know how I feel about that man and the thought of Ty or anyone else being harmed because of him makes my blood boil."

Clinging on to hope that it could not be Ahmed going ahead with a vendetta to get even with her, "It's my fault, if Ahmed had anything to do with this."

Clinching a determined jaw, the old cowboy tensed, leaned forward, squinting an eye, and then said in no uncertain terms, "If that prince fella comes around here lookin' for trouble, he may be surprised at how easy it is to find."

With exhaustion setting in and no desire to elaborate any further, Amy looked at her folded hands curled together in her lap, "I just wanted to let you all know what I think might have happened and to be aware of everything going on around you for a while. I am going to go to bed now. It's been a very long day and if things go like I think they will, tomorrow will be even longer."

* * *

Amy lay in her bed thinking about all she had been through in the past twenty-four hours, depleted of energy and wishing away the discomfort of burning muscles in need of rest. Her mind rambled through unsettling realizations she was now faced with and refused to calm enough to let sleep overtake her.

One of the methods of relaxation Dr. Bilson had been trying to inspire upon her to practice was thinking about their sessions, the questions and answers that had been brought up, and expand them into a realistic plan for moving forward in a positive way. Amy knew Bar had chosen to share sensitive and otherwise off limits topics involving another patient because the catastrophic losses to her confidence and self-worth during the past year had left her at rock bottom and falling. Guilt over the pain she had caused Ty and everyone she loved would eat her alive if she failed to get her own recovery from the breakup in check.

The untraditional counselling style of Bar Bilson was something Amy had learned to trust and supposed Ty felt the same way about the approach of Lisa's old friend in reaching into a patient's heart and mind to understand from where their issues originate and offer realistic solutions which seemed to be working. In the doctor's view, the two patients were indelibly connected to each other and Amy's understanding of her part in Ty's unusually sweeping decisions was an important piece of the process in rebuilding faith that everything would eventually work out for the best.

As their sessions went on, the patient had little doubt that her counselor had likewise shared things about her case to Ty as well, but it caused no ill will toward Bar's alternative methods. In fact, it made her feel better because, if anything, it was as if Bar was mediating a healing process specifically between she and Ty and her hope was that he would now have a way to understand the reasons she did what she did, that her feelings for him were real, that her feelings of regret from their separation were honest, and that she felt just as much love for him now as she ever had. It was simply unacceptable to have him think she would ever feel any other way than to want to be a part of his life, even if it was only to be as a friend.

* * *

At 9 am the phone in Lou's pocket vibrated and she stopped her work in the laundry to reach for it. "Hello?"

"Hey, Lou."

Recognizing the quizzical voice, Lou perked up, "Ty? How are you feeling? Did they let you out of the hospital yet? You're not planning on going ahead with the wedding today, are you?"

"Hold on, Lou! I'm fine, but I need a favor."

"C'mon, Ty, you can't be fine. Where are you? Ummm, favor? Of course, what do you need?"

"I'm still at the hospital. I'm getting dressed so I can leave right away because the doctor just now said I can go home. I need for you to look at my new suit, the one I had with me in the truck, and see if it is damaged. I need to see if it would be OK to wear today, if it needs to be mended or cleaned."

"Actually, I have it here with me now in the washroom. I don't see any damage at all, in fact, other than being wrinkled a bit, it should be fine. I will have it ready as soon as you need it."

"That's awesome, Lou! I owe you big time!"

"Don't mention it. Hey, how are you _really_ feeling?"

"My body is very angry with me right now. I'm hoping as soon as I can move around a bit that my muscles will loosen up but I won't be running any marathons for a while."

"So, I take this to mean that you have decided to go ahead with the wedding, then?"

"Lou, I think we have to do it now. Charlie is…,"

"Ty, I know. Amy told me what you talked about last night and about how she could tell Charlie isn't doing well. We are all sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, well, she is hanging in there but I know we don't have a lot of time to spare. Listen, I hear them coming down the hall to get me, so I need to finish getting ready. Thank you, Lou. This means a lot to me."

"I got it handled, don't worry. What else would a 'big sister' do for her 'little brother'? Take care of yourself and get some rest. We can talk as soon as you get settled and figure out how to get your suit to you." Lou needed to take him in her arms and give him a hug right then, but since she couldn't, "We love you, Ty. See you soon. Wait! Is the wedding still at two?"

"Sorry, I forgot to mention that. We are moving the ceremony to 4 o'clock. We all needed the extra time to get things back under control. Since you have my suit ordeal handled, now all I have to worry about now is how to cover up these knots on my head so the pictures won't look like it was a shotgun wedding and the family kicked my ass to make me show up like I'm supposed to."

* * *

Amy had gotten very little sleep for having been so exhausted the night before and decided she wanted to take up Georgie's suggestion and see if she could make Ty's old cowboy hat presentable if she cleaned it and stretched the brim to accommodate the new bumps on his head.

Every ranch had the materials on hand to take care of all the hats in the household and after scrounging them into her room and two hours of the wee morning scrubbing, shaping, brushing, and drying the renewed black hat, Amy was finally able to rest.

Wanting to be alone as long as possible before facing everyone getting ready for the big wedding day, Amy lay in her bed looking at the hat still stretched over the mannequin's head that her mother had bought just to reshape the ranch's headgear when she finally had to wash them, and released a small chuckle at the blank stare as it did its work. She knew this was not going to be the customary blissful, happy ceremony, but their families would still make it Charlie's special day even if it killed the rest of the ones trying to put it together so quickly.

Amy rolled over to look at her alarm clock sitting on the nightstand beside her bed. Eleven o'clock. Enough time to take a shower and get dressed before lunch. She needed to look her best today to help overcome the anxiety that threatened to keep her from doing her part to support Ty on such an important day. She couldn't let him down, no matter if she knew she would be dying a little inside while watching someone else in the place she should have been standing on his wedding day.

* * *

Jack waited beside the door, then sat quietly on the rocking chair on the front porch. Lisa had rushed the unrushable old cowboy until he needed some space and he decided to go outside and wait for the others. Lou had hurried everyone along this morning as well, making sure the chores were tended to and everyone would be finished with lunch in time so as not to be too late in getting a house full of people through the one bathroom they all had to share in getting dressed.

"Has anyone seen Amy?" the concerned older sister asked.

"She's still in her room," Georgie spoke up. "She was the last one in the shower so she should be finished pretty soon. I doubt she is in any hurry. Would you?"

Lou knew that Georgie still held a bit of a grudge over the breakup between the heroine she used to look up to and the man she should have been marrying. Even though the strong-minded girl had softened her harsh view of her aunt because of her mother explaining that part of the reason for her disappointing decisions was due to the head trauma and effects it had on Amy's ability to think clearly, the disillusioned teenager held on to the belief that Amy had betrayed Ty because of the prince and it was because of her that they had almost lost him the day before.

Leaning in to her oldest daughter, Lou whispered, "Would you give Amy a break, _please_? How was she? Did she look like she was managing OK?"

"She's kinda sad, I think," the fifteen-year-old answered softly, starting to feel a twinge of guilt for being so short over the woman who had always been the first to listen when she needed someone to talk to, at least that was the case before she took off and went to France with that creep, Ahmed.

"Yeah, I can't blame her. We need to remember to try our best to make her feel better, so do whatever you can, OK?"

"I will."

"That's my girl."

A bedroom door squeaked open and everyone held their breath in hopes that Amy had not fallen apart like they half expected her to. The displaced fiancée held her head high in defiance of her perceived defeat and disliked the pressure that all those worried eyes brought to every step she took into the living room.

"Sorry to keep everyone waiting," she apologized, "I just couldn't seem to get my makeup right today for some reason."

Lisa moved in and gave her a grandmotherly hug, "You can sit next to me. We will get through this together."

Amy's eyes darted quickly to her always supportive step-grandmother as the older woman returned a reassuring smile, "Thanks, Lisa. I may need a little help getting through this."

"What are you doing with that old hat?" Lou asked.

"I thought about what Georgie said last night and figured I might be able to help out with making Ty more presentable today, if I can get him to put it on. I modified it a bit by putting some wet cloth in the places Ty's bumps and bruises would be uncomfortable and stretched the brim enough so that he can wear it without it hurting too much."

Lisa took the hat out of Amy's hands and held it up so she and Jack could inspect her work. "You know, I think this could work!" she said, flipping the well-travelled prize to see the inside.

* * *

Avoiding sympathetic mutual friends as much as possible, Amy and Lou found Clint and asked about Charlie, Margie, and Ty. "How is everyone holding up?"

"Margie is barking orders, as usual, Charlie is a nervous wreck, and poor Ty is trying to find a way to comb his hair to cover up the knots on his noggin. Other than that, I'm pretty good, I guess."

"We have Ty's suit," Lou offered, "good as new, and I think Amy has found a way to fix Ty's other problem. Can we see him, please?"

"Sure, girls. He is down the hall, last door on the right. Tell him we start this thing in thirty minutes."

"I will. Thanks." Amy flashed the sympathetic older man a nervous smile and followed the hallway with her sister by her side to the door of the farthest room on the right.

A light tap on the door was answered sooner than she expected, "Hey!" Ty responded in surprise.

"Can we come in for a minute? Lou has your suit, and I think I have a way to fix your head."

"My head?'"

"Sorry! Just…," shooing him back into the room with a flutter if her hand, Lou held up the wrap and unzipped it to present the perfectly pressed suit, "This should be as good as new."

"Thanks, Lou, I don't know what I would do without you."

"Well, I just wish everyone else around here was as appreciative as you!" she smiled, and then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. "See you in a bit. I should go and see that the girls are still with Grandpa and Lisa.

After Lou had closed the door behind her, Amy presented the newly cleaned and shaped black cowboy hat and said, "Try this on."

"Amy, thanks, but I don't think I can make a hat work with these damn bumps all over my head. It hurt when I tried one on earlier."

"Just try this one," the determined purveyor of peace insisted.

Knowing the wrinkle of her brow meant it would be easier to simply agree to cooperate, Ty took the hat and positioned it carefully over his crown of swollen knots and pulled it to a slight tilt to the rear. 'That's not half bad! How'd you do that?"

"I remembered where your bumps were and I couldn't sleep last night, so I took grandpa's old hat and stretched it so they would have room under the brim and not push against you so much."

"You stretched Jack's hat? Shit! Amy! Does he know you did that to what I am sure is now the most valuable hat anywhere in Alberta?"

Amy didn't say a word, but the sparkle in the deep sky blue of her eyes reminded him of all the times she had skirted around the rules of Jack Bartlett and gotten away with whatever she had done, many times for his benefit, and felt a spark of his own when a sly smile curled the corners of her lips.

"The last time you gave me one of his old hats, it cost me fifty bucks," trying to decide if it would be inappropriate to laugh out loud.

"It did not! He gave that hat to you after you fell off your horse into that ravine because he thought you did a pretty good job on that cattle drive."

"I'd just as soon have given him the fifty bucks. I cracked two ribs that day."

Ty took the hat off and looked at the crown, pinch, and the crease, "Hey, I think I know this hat," smiling as he realized how much effort Amy must have put into modifying the old heirloom to fit his latest need. "It's more comfortable now, but it sits a little low, though."

It seemed like so long ago that Ty had surprised her with the idea of using the scarf she wore to cover the loss of hair from the operation she underwent in Europe with a more familiar hat, using it to bridge the bond that had slipped away between she and Spartan. Feeling the warmth of such personal memories, they each stood smiling into others eyes before a knock interrupted the moment.

"Hey, Ty, it's about time. You'd better get out here," Clint reminded his soon to be grandson in law.

Before Ty could reach for the door, "Remember what you did to make my hat fit that day in the barn, when I said I couldn't wear it anymore?"

"I took your scarf and used it under you hat to make it fit better so Spartan would know you again."

Amy unfastened a pin from the scarf around her slim waist and said, "This one?"

To his amazement, she took the hat from him and set it upside down on the bed, folded the scarf neatly, and slid the pin through the crease to keep it in place, "Try this," and handed it back to the surprised groom.

When he put her invention back on, the hat sat above his brow just like it should and he smiled, "You are still amazing, you know that?"

"Yeah, well, just get out there, and don't screw up," wishing she could kiss him like a thousand times before, instead turning toward the door.

Ty stepped in front of her and cracked the door telling the anxious man who, in the next few minutes, would give away the bride in a ceremony that he could barely believe was about to happen, "I will be right out. We just need one more minute," and closed it again before turning back to the girl who had held his heart from the day they first met, saying, "Amy, I know this is going to be a weird day for you, but I want you to know how much I appreciate the way you have treated Charlie and Sammy. They both really do like you and Charlie has told me she understands how we felt about each other, and why. I hope you two can talk, you know, after the wedding. She could really use a friend right now."

"Sure. I like her too, and I promise I will make time for her if she needs some girl talk. I'm so sorry she is having to cope with everything life has given her to deal with, but I know she is in good hands and you will do your best to make her life as happy and comfortable as possible."

Wanting to say so many things, Ty settled on placing his hands at Amy's upper arms and giving them a heartfelt squeeze, "Thank you, for everything," and then opened the door to let Amy find her seat before hurrying into his fresh suit and making the walk down the aisle to take his place at the altar.

* * *

Amy sat quietly looking down at her interlaced fingers, unable to make conversation with Lisa who tried her best to say anything she could think of to make her step-granddaughter feel a bit less dejected for the circumstances of this celebration. Minutes dragged on until the hushed conversation of the gathering was silenced by the piano striking up the first chords of the "Wedding March." Try as she may, Amy's heart began to sink with the finality of her situation, knowing that her own day was now a fantasy never to be realized. Curiosity, more than anything else, made her look toward the end of the aisle to see the shockingly gorgeous chestnut hair flowing shoulder length from under a full veil which complemented the most beautiful white gown she had ever seen.

Charlene McCrary had done it again, rebounding from the weakened shadow of a woman Amy had seen with her own eyes less than twenty-four hours ago and transformed into a stunning vision as breathtaking as the woman she had first met. It now seemed so long ago, that first impression of Ty's new lover, and she could not help but admire the bride, sweeping between the admirers on either side of the aisle who were in apparent awe of her beauty, rock steady as she walked toward the man she would soon call her husband.

The ceremony was over before Amy had reconciled that it had actually occurred and before she knew it the piano had begun the ceremonial first march as the couple kissed and turned to the audience as man and wife, Ty offering a firm grip on Charlie's waist for making sure she remained steady as they made their way to the rear of the church.

Lisa reminded the beleaguered younger woman that her family understood her situation by slipping a hand around Amy's waist and drawing her into a consoling hug. "You Okay?" she asked.

"Yes, I am fine, but if you don't mind, I think I am going to go home now. I don't feel well and I need to be alone."

"I understand, Honey, but promise me that you are really okay. Maybe a good cry will help, but if you are in trouble, please tell me. I want very much to be there for you, Amy. It will be a little better tomorrow, and a little more the day after. Remember, I am always here when you need me."

"I know you will, Lisa. Thank you. I'm going to be OK, I promise, just not today."

Lisa reached into her handbag and pulled out her keyring, "Here are the keys to my Porsche. Jack and I can ride back to the ranch with Lou and the girls. We will see you when we get home. Call if you need me for anything, you understand me?"

Amy took the keys and hugged the woman who had first defended her when she was fifteen and trying to make her way as a young professional in the wake of her mother's death. A heckling Val Stanton had accused the teenaged trainer of drugging a horse at a clinic Heartland Ranch had held to showcase the up and coming equestrienne's talents only to have Lisa, one of Amy's first paying customers, put the jealous competitor in her place in front of a snickering crowd. Amy had always looked up to the well-known breeder of some of the finest horses in the world as a role model and now considered Lisa as family, always watching, always offering more love than the ever-independent young woman quite knew how to accept.

Parking Lisa's SUV in its spot in Heartland's driveway with no one else around the ranch, Amy went inside to change into her usual shirt and jeans and sat down in the chair in front of her dresser, hardly able to share a reflective gaze with the sad looking woman looking back at her. A minute crept by before she startled herself back to reality and without even thinking about it she pushed the chair away from the mirror. Grabbing her hat off the bedpost on the way out the door, she started toward the barn seeking the old friend who still lived in his usual stall.

* * *

It was late enough that long shadows lay across the paths cutting a diagonal trail between the cemetery where she had taken time to have a talk with her mother and Caleb's old trailer. For some reason, she felt the need to go past it before returning home in hopes that no one would be there. She figured Caleb would still be at the wedding reception taking advantage of the open bar and Cass having to try her best to keep him out of trouble. ' _Good luck with that_ ,' she chuckled to herself.

Approaching from the valley below, Amy let Spartan take his time passing the corral where Shorty, Caleb's horse, was standing near the fence wanting to greet his buddy. She wondered what horses said to each other when they hadn't seen each other in a while and enjoyed the conversation they seemed to be having.

It had been three months since Caleb moved back into the little trailer. Ty had long gone to 8S Ranch to be with Charlie so the place had been sitting empty for most of the summer. She turned in the saddle to see the front porch where Ty left her in one of her lowest moments, the night he crushed any remaining hope that he would forgive her and try to make things between them work again. Thinking Spartan would rather spend some more time catching up with his old friend, the rider dismounted and draped his reins over a rail while she walked toward the humble dwelling, looking worse for wear with apparently no one keeping up with normal maintenance most homeowners practiced.

She wanted to remember the better times though, and as she looked around the front yard one of the first things to come to mind was a hot summer evening not long after she had accepted his ring. He had dared her to take a walk in the full moon down to the river in the valley below, a half mile of mostly exposed trail, completely naked, and skinny-dip in the moonlight. There were so many times he had done something to try and push her out of her comfort zone, trying to show her how to be more spontaneous and free. Those dares were almost too embarrassing to try at first, but proved to be exhilarating in the end, and if it had not been for the smart-ass boy who used to live in the loft over her barn, she couldn't imagine ever learning to have the courage to take a chance, a leap of faith, and experience so many of the simpler things life had to offer.

The sun was getting low and she did not want to take any chances of running her horse through a patch of prairie dog holes too difficult to see with no light on the trail, so she mounted the large black gelding and pulled his reigns toward home. Quiet rides with Spartan, her first success at healing a seriously injured horse, had always been one of the most treasured things in her life. She used her time with him to gather her thoughts and regretted thinking what would have happened to the bond between she and the animal if she had stayed in Europe.

What would her life have been like if she had chosen to live in Spain and accept the offer to manage Ahmed's villa like he had proposed. It was nothing like she had expected, but maybe it would not have been so bad, all things considered, to live in such a beautiful place alone, only having to entertain what would have been the king of a rich Persian country on the rare occasion he had the time to escape his duties as the most important man to his people. At least there could have been a chance that she would continue to build up her career as a top-notch trainer with an eye on making a move to better things someday.

More likely, reconsidering the odds, she would have ended up dead, buried in some desert with no one ever knowing where she had ended up. It couldn't have been much worse than living through seeing the man she loved taken away from her. She deserved it, she reasoned, the choice between living as a kept woman or a broken-hearted ex fiancée, neither of which she could have foreseen only a year ago.

A shadow crossed Amy's path and her heart leapt into her throat as Spartan pulled up in a start. A brilliant evening sun backlit the silhouette of a man standing on a hill to her right and she tried to shield her eyes enough to make out who it could be.

"Amy! What a pleasure it is to finally see you again!"

 _To be continued_


	51. Chapter 51

CHAPTER 51

Music filled the room crowded with a diversity of people from all walks of life. Some were older friends and business associates of her grandparents, some were a mix of friends she had made through her own business, a few were friends of Ty's from vet school and his younger years roaming around Hudson, and one was an old roommate of Charlie's from her time at the University of British Columbia. Cheri Horton was a full tilt lover of life with whom she had shared a textbook college experience of studying just enough to not have the partying be taken away because of disapproving parents and one of the few friends from her younger days she had kept in touch with all these years.

"I am so happy you could make it to the wedding, Cheri. It means a lot to have you here with me today."

"Are you kidding me? I was not going to miss the chance to finally meet the guy who tamed Charlene McCrary."

"Well, now that you have, whaddaya think?"

Letting the scene do its own explaining, her old friend took an index finger and playfully twisted it toward the center of the dance floor at the tall slender cowboy smiling from ear to ear with the three foot nothing little princess standing atop of his new boots, beaming up at her new dad like this day was all about her.

Charlie froze, mesmerized at the two disproportionate dancers enjoying the unforgettable moment, and began to tear up as she bit her lower lip trying not to get even more emotional than she already was. "Damn it Cheri, now I'm going to have to go fix my makeup," and laughed at the sweetness she could not take her eyes away from.

"Don't move," Cheri ordered.

Instead of situating herself to get a clear shot of the dancers among the others on the floor, her friend took a few steps farther away and crouched to one side of the bride, "I need you to look at them, Charlie," she directed, and as soon as she turned her head, a series of flashes bounced across the room.

"What are you doing?"

"You'll see!" Cheri said as she checked the results of her idea.

Charlie could tell from the look on her friend's face that she was pleased with what she had captured and accepted the phone when the impromptu photographer offered it her. A free hand covered her mouth as she smiled and stared at the screen, the display capturing the three of them perfectly together on their special day, the adoring bride looking on as her new husband and daughter shared their first dance together.

There was no holding back now. Charlie broke down and started to cry despite her best effort to hold back and her friend said, "C'mon, let's get you fixed up before your hot new husband comes looking for you."

* * *

One by one, the guests began to thin out as the reception ran into early evening. The effects of a long two days were beginning to wear the bride down and it was becoming more of a concerted effort to stay on her feet long enough to share a dance even with the man who could breathe life back into a tired body like hers. Ty could tell that she was running out of energy and whispered into her ear, "After this dance is over, I think you should go ahead and get some rest. Everyone will understand."

"As much as I want to disagree with you, _Husband,_ I think I am going to have to take you up on that. Jeez, that is _so_ cool to say! Husband! Husband! Husband!" each time a little closer to his ear and finally nipping his lobe gently in her teeth as soon as she got close enough. I hope you never get tired of me calling you that."

He leaned in to peck her on the lips, "C'mon, I will walk you to your room," he said as she started to lead her away.

"No, you stay," Charlie said, giving him a first order, or direction, as she would prefer to call it, as his wife. "I am afraid that I might not let you out of _our_ room if I get you in there alone," slipping a playful hand around to his butt to take a mischievous squeeze.

Ty reacted by arching his back and found himself up on his tip toes as a few of the nearer dance partners snickered at seeing what his bride had just done. Too embarrassed to be angry, all there was to do was laugh at the old spark that he knew had not left his wife and did not resist when she scooped the same hand around his neck and gathered his hair into her fingers, drawing him into a passionate kiss before she left him there, standing in the middle of the dance floor watching in awe as she walked away.

Before he could completely gather his full composure, Cheri approached from nowhere and tapped him on the shoulder, "Would it still be cutting in if the bride has left her groom standing all by himself?"

He stammered in surprise, "Uhhmm, no, I don't suppose it would," and tried to cover his heightened embarrassment with a clumsy chuckle.

The music ended as soon as they took their stance, "Oh, you're not going anywhere, yet," Cheri said, "I'm getting my dance out of you first," smiling in much the same way Charlie did when she had him at a disadvantage, a raised eyebrow daring him to challenger her will.

The band started another song and Ty instinctively began to move with the music. "Charlie told me that she just about has you trained to lead. I see that she was telling the truth," his wife's old friend tested his humor.

"Yeah, well, she can be the eternal optimist," he scoffed.

"No, I would say she was being very realistic," this time, smiling more like an old friend. "I am so glad she found someone like you, Ty. I can tell that you are the real deal. You have made a big difference in her, you know. Even with the way things have worked out with her health, I can tell that she has finally found the peace she needed in her life, and I know it has a lot to do with finding you to share it with."

"Thank you for saying that, Cheri. And I want to tell you how much I appreciate your coming on such short notice to be here with us today. It meant a lot to her to have you here."

"Wouldn't have missed this for anything, Dr. Borden. Meeting the man who met Charlene McCrary's standards was something I had to see for myself."

"I don't know what kind of standards I have met, but I think I am the lucky one. Charlie changed the way I think about myself, and even the way I think about others, too. I guess you could say that we found each other when the time was right. We needed each other and it has been a good thing for both of us."

"You mean, all three of you, right?"

"Yeah! Right! I keep forgetting, I'm a dad now!" he remembered, embarrassed again at seeming to forget his new status.

"I have something you should see," Cheri reached inside the pocket hidden under the belt around her waist, plucking out the phone to show him a picture, "Look at this and see if you think you have forgotten anything."

His eyes were fixed on the display, Charlie beaming at Sammy and him on the dance floor, and he stood speechless as it sunk in, his new family in one picture for the first time.

"See! That's what I'm talkin' about. There is nothing but love in that photo. That's what I see, and it's what you see as well. You are doing something special here, Ty. You could have just as easily dropped them and run the other way as fast as you could, but you chose to stay and see this through. I was kind of like Charlie, believing that fairy tales were nothing but lies, but here you are, her knight in shining armor, big as life, showing everyone here that there really is true love and chivalry left in the world."

"Don't let the moment cloud your judgement, Cheri. I'm just a guy who needed someone as much as I was needed. Charlie is the kind of girl who doesn't just make you take notice, she knocks you off your feet and takes no prisoners. She took me, and I'm glad she did."

The music ended and Ty knew he had made a new friend. "Thank you again for being here, Cheri. I'm glad Charlie has someone like you she can count on. I need to see a few old friends before I tell Clint and Margie that I am going to see about Charlie."

* * *

The table he was looking for was next to the dance floor, Jack and Lisa just settling in their seats after the most dancing the two of them had ever done in one occasion, Lou and Georgie swapping looks at pictures they had taken, and Katie with Sammy occupying themselves with miniature white horse centerpieces they had taken from the nearby tables.

"I haven't had my dance yet," Lou spoke up.

"Well, let's take care of that right now," Ty smiled down as he answered the request and extended a hand to the beautiful dark haired woman.

When they were in position on the floor, a slow song was played by the band. "You look really nice today, Lou. Thank you again for all you did for us. We couldn't have done it without you."

"Well, I never could say no to you, like you would ever forget that," she grinned and pinched her lips, "You were such a handsome groom today. I can't believe you guys pulled this off like you did."

"I guess it was just supposed to happen. We needed it to, and it did."

"How is Charlie holding up? I haven't seen her in a while," Lou asked.

"I sent her up to rest a little while ago. I could tell she was starting to have trouble keeping up with everyone else."

"Why don't you let Sammy come with us tonight?" Lou suggested. "Katie has been missing her and I know Clint and Margie could use a break after the last few days we have all had."

"If we can talk her into it, that would be great, Lou."

"Oh, I don't think that will be an issue. Katie already asked her and they are plotting on begging you to see if you will let her come with us."

The dance ended and Lou kissed her partner lightly on the cheek. "Thank you for the dance. I am a pretty good teacher, after all!"

"I guess you could say that. You are the one who forced me into taking lessons with you so I could take Amy to that school dance. By the way, where is she? I wanted to thank her for, well, saving my life to start with, and I wanted to thank her for what she did with this old hat. It made the whole day seem a little less awkward with not having to explain the knots on my head to everyone who asked for the hundredth time."

"Amy came earlier out of determination to show her support for you and Charlie. She told me she felt she owed you at least that much, but I think it turned out to be harder than she hoped it would be to act like she is all good with everything, the way things have worked out. She wanted to leave early and be alone for a while, so I would expect that Spartan is taking care of her right about now, somewhere out on the ranch. She has a lot of things to work out for herself, Ty. Nothing to do now but let her know we love her and will be there for her when she needs us."

"Tell her for me? That I asked about her and hope she is OK? And, when things settle down, I want her to keep working with Sammy since I won't have enough time to do it myself for a while, and Charlie can't…"

"I'll tell her. It will mean a lot for her to hear that from you."

As they approached the table, the two conspirators stood between Jack and Lisa bursting with anticipation of having to make their case, "What's up, you two?"

"Ty, can Sammy come home with me tonight? We promise not to cause any trouble."

Ty glanced at the older man and his wife trying her best not to burst out laughing at the cuteness of the pair between her and the old cowboy who could rarely say no to his great granddaughter when she used those sad eyes, "Let's see what the others have to say about it," and tried not to let his amusement show.

"This is your first executive decision as a parent, you know," Lisa egged on the appeal, "so don't blow it, _Dad_."

"OK, you win. Just promise me that you two will behave yourselves," he warned his step daughter and her friend, "or I will be there in a minute to come and get you."

"We will!" the bouncing girls chimed together, and they both jumped in his arms when he bent down to give them each a hug.

"Thanks, everyone. It means a lot that you came. I think I should go check on Charlie. She was pretty tired earlier, so I want to see that she is getting her rest like I told her to."

"I hope you have better luck than I do with telling my bride to do…, well, anything!" Jack chuckled, wincing from a poke to the ribs by his blushing wife.

Ty took a great deal of pleasure in seeing the crusty old rancher who had taught him most of what he knew about being the kind of man he took pride in being having someone to share the twilight years of his life, "Good luck with the rest of the night, Jack," and chuckled. "Goodnight, everyone."

With one last stop to make before leaving the room, Ty saw Clint entertaining a crowd of his old friends in front of the lit-up fireplace and stepped into the gust stirred up by the old cowboys' tall tales from days gone by, "Hey Clint, everyone."

"There he is, everybody, my new Grandson!" and tossed a heavy arm around the younger man's shoulders.

"I just wanted to tell you that I am going to check on Charlie and see if she needs anything," Ty said. "I'm probably going to call it a day, too. It's been a hell of a past couple of days."

The mood changed in an instant, the realization by the surrounding group that the newcomer to the family had accepted the challenge of something far more formidable than any of them had ever taken on, much more frightening than any pissed off bull or bronc. Every man there shook his hand, nothing more than a firm nod of admiration for the young man who had gained all their respect for his incontestable fortitude, and when he turned to leave he could see Margie through the door into the kitchen with one of her oldest friends, Carly McGuire, standing in front of the sink, already rinsing dishes and loading them in the washer.

"Why aren't you in there with your friends, Margie? There is nothing here that I can't take care of in the morning," he suggested, hoping to lift a part of a heavy burden he knew she was carrying on her shoulders today.

"Never you mind about the dishes, Ty. It gives me something to do that I don't have to think about so much. Charlie's already turned in. I looked in on her a few minutes ago. She was sound asleep, smiling as big as you please," she said, trying to appear pleased with the way things had ended up.

"That's good. I think she had a good day, after all," he shook his head in amazement. "That girl never has anything go the easy way."

"Never has, my Charlene, but she sure did land herself a good husband," the busy woman said, drying her hands with a dish cloth and draping it over the edge of the sink, seeming so frail to the taller man who watched her with genuine concern.

"Promise me, Mrs. McGuire, that you won't let her keep this up all night?"

Margie's friend reassured him, "Call me Carly, Ty, and as hard headed as she is, I will see to it that she gets some rest."

"Good. Thank you, Carly. OK, that's it for me," he said. "Get some rest, OK," an accusatory finger wagging in front of his new grandmother-in-law, and the older woman wrapped her arms around the skinny man who had become the newest member of the family, lingering in need of comfort after such a harrowing past twenty-four hours.

* * *

Careful not to make any unnecessary noises, the groom slipped through the door of Charlie's room, their room, as a matter of fact, to try and approach his sleeping beauty without waking her. When he had almost made it to the side of the bed, "Hey, you. What time is it?"

"It's almost eight o'clock. The party is winding down and I'm beat, so I thought you may not mind some company."

"Get in here and warm me up. For some reason, I can't get rid of this chill."

Charley watched him try not to let her see him whence at the pain while carefully removing his shirt, boots, and pants, and she laughed out loud when he forgot to take off his custom black hat before turning down the covers and climbing in beside her.

"I obviously don't wear a hat very often," he said, a bit embarrassed for making a fool of himself when he was trying to be considerate of his wife and her condition.

"You should. I don't think I have told you yet how handsome you were today."

"Yes, as a matter of fact, you did, several times," he said through a smile.

"Well, I didn't say it enough. I need to thank Amy for coming up with that idea about stretching the tight spots out for you like she did. That was pretty good thinking. She is a good friend, Ty. You mustn't let her get away from you."

He heard his wife sniffle, apparently getting emotional about something on her mind. "What are you saying? Maybe we can be friends again, but…"

"I want you to promise me that you won't just shut her out of your life. She has a good heart, Ty. She still cares about you, and so does the rest of her family. I watched them a lot during the reception. I can tell how proud of you they all were."

"They are my family, my _real_ one, anyway. I owe everything to all of them."

"That's good, that you have them to turn to. Just don't let that connection get away from you, promise?"

"Yeah, sure. I have every intention of including them in my life for as long as we are all here. So, what brought all this on? What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about how I should be ravaging your body right now, and I can't do it. I wish more than anything else that I could show you how much I love you and give you the kind of wedding night that you deserve to remember, one where you go to sleep begging for mercy and can't wait until you have enough energy to do it all again," covering her eyes with the back of her wrist trying not to break down, like she promised herself not to do.

Ty rolled on to his left side, the one without the bruises, and brushed his fingertips gently across her cheek to capture the tears that had begun to fall, "If you remember, you have already given me a memory like that, several times. I know how you feel about me, don't ever doubt that," and raised himself enough to kiss her lips, lingering long and slowly to prove his point.

Charlie put her hands firmly around his neck and drew him tighter, the old fire inside her burning as hot as ever, "Make love to me, Ty. It will be OK."

It was the last thing he had expected her to say, but there was no denying she needed to feel loved the way she knew he could make her feel. "I don't want to hurt you. Are you sure about this?"

"I have a few things in mind that will take care of us both. Just work with me," she said, sounding like her old rascally self.

* * *

Sleep finally threatened to put an end to one of the most bizarre wedding days Ty figured anyone had ever experienced. His bride was curled up against him, breathing long and steady as she soundly slept, and he couldn't help but smile at the way they had ended their wedding night earlier than most, but what else had they ever done that was normal? ' _She must have put a lot of research into all of this_ , _and damned if she wasn't determined enough to pull it off_ ,' he thought, amazed one more time by the cowgirl who had proven to be more than she seemed on first sight, as breathtaking as that first sight had been.

* * *

The rider's blood ran cold when she recognized the voice. "What are you doing here? Get away from me!" she demanded.

"I would have expected you to be more considerate of our overdue reunion, Amy," the voice spoke calmly, a tone of mockery filtering in. "After all, it was you who destroyed everything I have worked my entire life to achieve."

"You did that to yourself, Ahmed! You can't expect to get away with what you did to all those other people, Aleah, Rasha, who knows how many others, and to me!"

"You had everything, Amy! I would have made sure of it!"

"You would have killed me if it wasn't for Gabby. She is the only reason I am still alive, and you know it."

"Don't be ridiculous, Amy! We were fine until that girl put all those crazy ideas into your head. You had the kind of life any woman could have wished for and threw it all away for, what, the idea that you could come back to this place to be a _'horse whisperer?'_ How foolish could you be? This is not a place that can give you what you need. I know you, Amy. You want to be more than this!"

His arrogance incensed her, "The only thing you know is what you want for yourself! You are nothing more than a liar and a murderer! How dare you tell me what I want in my life!"

Ahmed scoffed, "Perhaps I know better than you know yourself what it is that you need. Your choice to leave Barcelona was a senseless mistake. There is nothing left here for you now. It seems that even your stable boy has left you behind. What are you going to do now that he thinks of you as a used woman and replaced you with a more suitable wife?"

"You have no idea what you are talking about! It isn't any of your business what Ty or anyone else does with their life. You are the one who tried to hurt him, aren't you? You are the one I saw sitting on the road where his truck was crashed."

"I needed to demonstrate to you that I am not yet as defeated as you might have thought, Amy. I am still quite capable of reaching out to you anywhere you may be in the world, any time I wish," he boasted. "It is time for you to stop this foolishness and come back to Europe, where you belong."

"You have _got_ to be kidding me! Where are you even welcome to go in Europe now that everyone knows that you are the disgrace of your country? Enough, Ahmed! Go! Leave me alone!"

"I am afraid I cannot do that, Amy. Get down off your horse, immediately!"

Anger pushed aside the crushing fear that gripped the pit of her stomach and Amy began to realize this could be the fight of her life, the next few seconds deciding if she would allow him a final victory of seeing her lose everything she had left on this hillside where she had ridden a thousand times. This was Heartland, _her_ special place. It was not his to take away.

Regaining the presence of mind to try maneuvering Spartan so that Ahmed was not between her and the sinking sun, Amy stalled a moment, allowing her eyes to readjust in the new light, checking to see if he was armed. The deposed prince's hand twitched nervously at his side and a definite glimmer flashed across the barrel of a stainless firearm hanging loosely in his grip. She had brought her own presumed protection, just like every other day since she had gotten back to Canada, but saw no way to make an undetected move toward the special holster tucked just behind her right leg on Spartan's saddle. Realizing that he may not know about her new strategy for self-preservation, she tugged once again on Spartan's reigns to make sure the weapon was out of his sight, praying that she might have a chance to unfasten the flap before he spotted the threat.

"I am going to ride away, Ahmed. I suggest you leave now, before someone discovers you are here, because I wouldn't want to be you when they do," she warned, knowing she spoke the truth.

"I cannot do that, Amy," he answered, seeming to struggle with a new approach at her not cowering to his dominance, as he had expected. "Get down! Now!"

Taking a deep breath, Amy made sure her right hand was hidden from his view and tried to swallow the lump in her throat in fear that her fate would ultimately be determined by the last move she had left to make. In another attempt to distract her stalker, "How did you get all the way out here? How did you know where I would be?"

"You are a predictable woman, Amy. I have been following you ever since you left the wedding," seeming to take pride asserting power over his assumed prey. "I anticipated that you would go for a ride like you always do when you are distressed and I know this place is one of your favorite shortcuts. The odds were with me," he sneered.

"Who is that?" Amy nodded toward Ahmed's left side, gambling that he might be paranoid enough to take a quick look into the sun to afford her the opportunity to slip the pistol into her hand and fire the one shot she would get to end this without dying alone on this hillside, no one knowing her fate until the buzzards started circling the sky above her remains.

It worked. A quick glance was enough to divert the edgy man's attention and cause his pupils to react to the brilliant sunset, just like she had counted on, and as he strained to refocus on her, her right hand bolted down to secure the grip of her weapon.

Ahmed's armed hand began to raise instinctively when he realized what she had done and just as Amy pulled the pistol out of her holster it slipped out of her shaking hand and thumped to the ground. The pit of her stomach convulsed into a knot knowing the mistake had left her totally exposed to whatever the indignant former lover wished to do with her.

Amy's chest seized, no way to breathe now, and there was a split second that her life actually passed by in slow motion as she had time to think, _'This is how it all ends. I will never have the chance to fix the mess I made of things.'_

Anticipating the burst of a burning bullet to run through her, Amy braced for the worst, and when she heard it, jolted straight up in her saddle as the black gelding lurched forward and left her falling backward into the soft grassy hillside beside the trail. Another shot rang out and echoed through the valley as it subsided, even more robust than the first, and in short succession another two followed.

She lay motionless in the tall grass standing high around her. A gentle evening breeze flittered through it without sound or any fixed direction. It was much more peaceful than she had imagined it would be. The last thought she would have in this world was to wonder if she would be reunited with her mother soon, if Marion had missed being with her loved ones as much as she had missed her mother.

 _To be continued_


	52. Chapter 52

CHAPTER 52

"Amy! Amy!"

Where was that coming from? Oddly, it sounded just like her dad. She reasoned that he must have somehow understood that his youngest daughter was also leaving him behind to be in the same place as the love of his life who had already left this earth, the one he had lost so long ago in the accident which had finally brought him home again. "Amy!"

The shadow of a larger than life cowboy hovered over her, ' _Strange way to welcome someone into the afterlife_ , she thought.

"Amy! Don't move!"

"Dad?"

"Tell me you are OK, Amy! Are you hurting anywhere?"

"I—he-Ahmed-sh-shot me!"

The dark image dropped down closer and she felt his strong arms wrap around her, raising her up from where she lay in the grassy field. She could feel his warmth as he squeezed her back to life, "Dad? It really _is_ you!"

It took a few seconds for the reeling cowgirl to realize that, although she could feel the effects of the fall, she hadn't left this world after all and started crying hysterically into Tim Fleming's heaving chest. "I'm bleeding!"

"It's not you who is bleeding, Honey, it's me," and coughed to try and fill his lungs with the air that had been knocked out of them from the first round which had left Ahmed's pistol. "It's OK, Amy, it's OK. I fixed this. I fixed everything."

"Dad! What happened? He shot you, instead of me?"

"He saw me coming and spun around and took a shot at me. Nicked me in the chest a little, that's all. He won't ever threaten you or anyone else again, Amy, I promise."

"Is he…, dead?"

"I had to, Amy. He would have shot you right out of the saddle if I hadn't surprised him like that. He proved that he was out of control when he fired that pistol."

"I know, it's just that…, what are we going to do? They will blame us for killing a member of a royal family from another country and…,"

"The police already knew that Ahmed was a threat, Amy."

"How could they know? I mean, I told the Mountie who investigated Ty's accident what I suspected, but I had no _proof_ yet."

"Yeah, well, I was riding my fence line all morning, and again after lunch, keeping an eye out around here after Jack called and told me what you said to them after you got home from the hospital last night. That's why I didn't take Clint up on the invite to Ty and Charlie's wedding, as if Ty would have wanted me there in the first place," scoffing at the thought of him being at Ty's special day after all the run ins he and the young ranch hand had butted heads over for all those years. "I figured somebody had better stay home and be on the lookout for anything suspicious, if someone out of place should come around these parts again looking for trouble. I had seen that black Suburban drive by a couple of times earlier in the day and when I saw it parked on the road just over that hill I gave it a once over. I found some damage to the headlight and front bumper guard so I called the RCMP and ask for the Mountie Jack told me about, Sergeant Quesnay, and told him about it. It only took a minute until they called me back and said the plates were registered to Ahmed and that they were dispatching two of the closest officers immediately and not to try anything on my own until he got here, so, naturally, I came looking for him. Luckily, for both of us, I found him."

The complexities of their situation were not yet clear and the two of them took a moment to let their minds wrap around the fact that something major had just happened and many people would be asking a lot of questions. They each had come to grips with the fact that, although necessary, this act of finality would forever change both of their lives. Thankful that he had made it in the nick of time, Tim Fleming and his shaken daughter embraced, sharing a somber look as the sirens began to echo through the foothills.

"We'll be OK if we just tell the truth, right?" Amy needed reassurance from somebody stronger than her, remembering how easily her former employer had gotten away with such heinous crimes for years simply because of his status.

"Yes, Honey, we'll be fine," and held her tighter, a shiver running through him at the thought of how differently this day would have been remembered if another five seconds had passed before he found his little girl.

* * *

The still shaking victim was sitting beside a local rescue worker when she heard a someone screaming, "Amy!" The shriek came from out of sight, but she knew it was her panic driven older sibling desperate to find her father and little sister. She saw Lou as she cleared the top of the hill, frilly dress and loosened dark hair streaming straight behind her as she came in a dead run, none of the police officers chancing to step in between her and the one's she searched for.

Lou slid to a stop on her knees, throwing her arms around the embattled woman who was already crying at seeing such a welcome sight coming to be with her. "Lou!"

"Are you alright? Where's Dad? You said on the phone that he got shot?"

"Dad is in the ambulance. They just left for the hospital a couple of minutes ago."

"What happened? How badly is he hurt?"

"He will be fine, Lou, at least physically. Thankfully, the bullet glanced off one of his ribs and only grazed his arm. He probably has a cracked or broken rib and some serious bruising to go along with the tears in his skin, but other than losing some blood, he will be OK."

"And, Ahmed's…, dead?"

The guilt ridden young woman glanced some fifty meters away toward two officials hovering over the body. The feeling of responsibility for everything that had led up to this tragedy gripped her and shook her head as the tears came again, "Dad had to do it, Lou, or else I would have been the one going in that bag. He's…,"

"He's dead?" Lou knew, but couldn't wait to be told.

The shaken victim nodded in disbelief that it had come to this, "It was him after all, following me, and apparently, some of the rest of you too. He admitted to me that he ran Ty off the road when I accused him, said he had to do it to prove to me that I hadn't escaped him yet, and never would. He just came up on me while I was riding and…, Shit! _Where is Spartan_?" The thrown rider had been so preoccupied with her own survival and that of her father's that she hadn't considered the last time she saw her horse he was pulling up clumps of grass with his hooves as he disappeared over the hill. "He threw me off and bolted when he heard the first shot! I hadn't even thought of where he's gotten off to."

"Don't worry, Amy. He knows these hills as well as any of us. We'll find him soon, I know we will."

"I have to go find him, Lou! He was so spooked by all the gunshots there is no telling how far he got before he stopped running, if he has stopped at all."

"He will be fine. He's as smart of a horse as any I have ever seen and he will figure out soon enough that the threat is gone. He's probably stuffing himself with some of this tall grass somewhere close by as we speak."

"I hope so. I would hate to think that something could happen to him, too, over this."

"What about you?" Lou changed the focus toward the one she was most concerned about. "Why aren't you headed toward the hospital with Dad? You took a nasty fall, and with all the trauma you have had…,"

"I was only dazed a little, that's all. I had just taken it for granted when I heard that first shot that I was already dead so I just laid on the ground thinking it was all over until Dad came running up to me, yelling his head off. I don't think I ever became unconscious, just dazed. The paramedic checked me before he took Dad away and said that he couldn't see any signs of head trauma, and so long as I promised to come to the hospital when we are finished up here with the police, he would clear me for now."

"What do we need to do to finish up here?" Lou surveyed the scene, looking for whoever was in charge. "Don't move," the senior Fleming sister ordered, "I will be right back."

It only took two minutes until Lou had taken command of finishing up the formalities of the investigation. All the prudent questions had already been answered, Sergeant Quesnay giving her the OK to transport the victim to the emergency room for her second appearance in as many days, and their grandfather was on his way to look for Spartan.

"Let's get you up," Lou leaned down to assist her tousled sister, "Sure you can walk to the road from here?"

"It's just over the hill, Lou, I can make it," perturbed at having anyone think she still needed to be fussed over, but very thankful just the same.

* * *

Morning had broken well before the light woke her, but Ty had been avoiding tossing around for at least an hour trying to decide if the pain from his bruised torso warranted the risk of waking Charlie by getting out of bed to get a prescription pain reliever from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The new Mrs. Borden seemed to be sleeping peacefully, something he dared not disturb, so he tolerated the discomfort until she finally stirred, stretching like Sammy's kitten after a long nap.

"Morning…," she mumbled, smiling wider as her arms spread into full blossom in her first awakening into a much different life, the blur of sweet dreams coming into focus and becoming real, "Don't you think you should kiss your new wife when she wakes up from the best dream she has ever had, you know, to prove that you aren't just a horny fantasy I imagined last night?"

One thing remained constant, Ty reconciled to himself, as long as Charlene McCrar…, er, Borden, was still breathing, the woman would look for the fun in life and wring every last ounce of enjoyment out of it that she could. He couldn't help but remember his own pain and wondered how she did it, seeming oblivious to a body that was as often as not an enemy to her these days. "Good morning, wifey," and cringed at the sound of it. "Somehow, that doesn't work with you, does it."

"It better not," she pouted, and slipped out a finger and thumb to twist his unsuspecting nipple.

"Ow!"

"You have already forgotten?" she asked.

"Forgotten, what?"

"Rule number 12," she mused, showing him the patented sly grin he had come to adore, "Honey, Sweetheart…, Beautiful, those will get you laid, but _wifey_ , that's gonna be painful…, _for you_ ," enjoying a guilty giggle.

"I'll have to remember that," he conceded, "Hey…, Beautiful," and leaned in to nip her neck at one of her more vulnerable ticklish spots.

A girlish squeal and her cackling made them share a laugh, and when they had caught their breath, their eyes found each other in the soft light, drawing them together into a kiss worthy of their first time waking up as husband and wife.

"I love you, Husband," she said.

"And, I love you, too, wif…, Aohawww!"

* * *

Standing at the bathroom sink looking in the mirror and scruffing his stubble after stepping out of the shower, the new husband bent down and fumbled around in the second drawer of the cabinet hunting for a bag containing his bath and shaving supplies which had miraculously disappeared since he had put it there the day before. "Jeez, Charlie, I thought you agreed to let me have at least a corner of this drawer for my stuff," he complained.

An amused voice answered from the other room, "Did I say which corner?"

Trying not to let himself become overly annoyed, he responded, "Is it going to be like this every morning, you messing with my daily rituals?"

"I think if you'd bend over just a _li-itle_ bit farther, you just might find your stuff in the back corner of that drawer, right side, _awww-lllllll_ _the way to the back_."

Knowing he might as well let her have her fun while she enjoyed this reprieve from a grueling normality, he straightened up stepped through the door to catch her watching him in the reflection of the two dressing mirrors that doubled as closet doors in the opposite corner of her bedroom. "Hey! You've been peeking?"

"Hell ya! It ain't every day a girl gets a view like _that_!

Using pinched lips and a scowl to submit a quasi-formidable protest, the new spouse tried his best to call her bluff, but when she burst out laughing for the second time this morning, Ty just gave up and walked up to her, bent down, and planted a big wet kiss on her cheek, leaving half of his shaving cream transplanted all over her face.

"Prepare yourself, _Sweetheart_. It's _on_!"

They couldn't help but take the opportunity to pause and stare at each other, half dressed and looking the part of old married people getting ready for the new day for the first time on the legitimate side of the so-called rules of intimate engagement, as some would see it, both well pleased with the way things were starting off.

Just when the newlyweds were settling down and getting serious about finding something to eat for breakfast, a padding of feet moving more quickly than normal shuffled down the hallway toward their room.

"Charlene! Ty! I hear that you're up. I need to see you right away, please."

"What is it, Gram?" Charlie cracked open the door to see what was the matter.

"I need to tell you that I have some news. Lisa Stillman called me just as I was going to bed last night and told me that there has been an incident near Heartland last evening."

Ty slumped rearward onto the dresser, catching himself with his hands and bracing for the worst, "What happened? Is anyone hurt?"

Charlie stepped out into the hall, already fearful of bad news, "Where is Sammy? Is she OK? Why didn't anyone tell me if something was wrong?"

"Sammy is fine, Charlene. She spent the night with Lou and Katie at Lisa's house. Lisa had them come over to Fairfield where she has plenty of security..,"

"Security?" Charlie leapt toward her grandmother, "Gram, what the hell happened? Why was their security in question?"

Margie held up her hands to slow her increasingly agitated granddaughter down, "Sooo, when Lisa suggested that they were out of any danger and already getting ready for bed, that they didn't know anything was wrong at Heartland yet, I agreed that it would be best for everybody if we just let her stay there until this morning. I knew how tired you were and I didn't see a need to wake you and get you all worried. I can send your grandfather to go and pick Samantha up just as soon as we finish breakf…,"

"You still haven't told me what happened!" the rattled mother argued, "Forget that! I am going to go and pick her up myself!"

"Charlie, I will take you," Ty spoke up. "I need to find out what happened, if everyone is OK."

"Ty, sorry to leave you hanging like that," Clint approached from the kitchen upon hearing the escalation of panic, feeling guilty in realizing that his new step grandson would have been concerned over the people that meant so much to him as well, "Lisa said that Amy was out riding her horse on one of the trails she likes to use over there and that Ahmed fella came out of nowhere on the trail on foot and caught her off guard."

The first thought Ty had was of the pistol Amy had drawn on him when he surprised her at the campsite by the river, "Is she OK? Did he hurt her?" he asked, his imagination running wildly ahead of him.

"Yes, she is going to be OK from what we hear. She is still in the hospital this morning, though, for observation. She fell off her horse when shots were fired between her dad and the other fella. Lou said she is going to be alright, just shaken up a bit."

"Tim was there, too? What happened?" the former fiancé to the girl in question was obviously heading straight toward a panic.

"Amy's dad, Tim, saw a suspicious vehicle parked on the road yesterday afternoon while he was riding his fence line so he called the RCMP. They called him back and told him the vehicle was leased to that prince and of course Tim immediately went out in the field tracking where he had walked through the grass. It sounds like Tim showed up just in time to save her life because when he surprised the prince fella, the guy took a shot at him and grazed him in the chest. That's when Amy's horse spooked and she fell off and it ran away, but ol' Tim fired three rounds and sent the prince home to his maker, whoever that is."

"Ahmed's dead?"

"That's what Lisa told us."

' _What else could go wrong?'_ Ty thought to himself. It seemed that lately, no sooner than they had all gotten over one disaster, another one blew up in everybody's face. Now this. "How is Tim? Did she say?"

"Yes, she did. Tim is still admitted in the hospital too. He has a broken rib and a nasty tear in his hide where the bullet ricocheted off the bone. Lucky man. Anybody else would have been a gonner, but apparently, Tim Fleming's hide is still as tough as any leather chested old bronc rider I ever saw."

"That he is," Ty said, more thankful than he normally would have been for the long-time antagonist's wellbeing.

* * *

When Ty parked the big red truck in the driveway adjacent to Lisa Stillman's majestic white house, the wheels had not stopped turning before his passenger's door flew opened and Charlie had a foot on the running board.

"Whoa! Dammit, Charlie, you aren't going to do anybody any good if you get yourself run over before we get here!" he attempted to scold the anxious mother, but knew she paid him no attention.

Looking straight ahead, Charlie hit the ground in stride and never slowed all the way up to the generously welcoming porch. Just as she made the top step, the door swung open and Sammy ran out to meet her, "Mom! What are you doing here? Do I have to go home already?"

"Sammy! Are you OK?"

The confused little girl accepted the crushing hug, "Yeah, I'm OK. What's the matter with you?"

Feeling a little embarrassed when Lisa, Lou, and Katie came through the wide-open door, Charlie buried her face into the little girl's neck and sobbed, "I'm sorry, baby, I just had to be sure."

Everyone gave the distraught mother the space she needed to assure herself that there really was no further need for concern about her child's safety. When she released her grip on Sammy and looked up, Charlie saw a porch full of people who appeared to be more worried for her than for the child, so she straightened up and faced them, "I'm sorry for making such a big deal out of this, but all I could think about was not knowing she was alright. I don't know what I would do if…,"

Lou stopped her friend short and grasped her into an understanding hug, "Don't you apologize for worrying about your daughter. I'm sorry too, that we didn't wake you last night when we decided it would be better if we brought them here. It's just that…," realizing what she had to say did not need to fall on young ears, "Margie called and told us you were headed this way and said you haven't had breakfast yet," summoning her friends, "The grill is still hot so, whaddaya say about sitting down at the table and having some nice hot pancakes with bacon and eggs while we talk? Got some of Grandpa's special blend coffee, too. Besides, Lisa wants to take the girls out to the barn and see her beautiful new race horse, so that will give us a chance to catch up on all the news."

"C'mon, ladies," Lisa picked up on Lou's lead without hesitation. "How about coming out to the barn and telling me what you think of my new race horse? He's a fast one, I tell ya'!"

"Yay!" the young girls excitedly agreed as they each grabbed one of her legs and gave her a big squeeze, and then she gathered up her new helper's hands to walk through her flower garden and on to the gleaming white and green trimmed barn where she kept her latest pride and joy.

Lou snatched a fresh pot of coffee off the burner and poured three cups full, then sat it back on the holder in the center of the table as she found a seat opposite of Ty beside the distraught mother. "Charlie, I really do understand how you must feel, but Margie told us how exhausted you were and that you had gone to sleep already. We all assured her that Sammy would be safe here and the threat to any of us was over. Lisa called in two more extra guards from her security company, just to be sure. None of us would have taken a chance if it wasn't."

"I know, Lou. I just freaked. I can't take any chances with her, you know? She is the most precious thing in my life."

"Believe me, I understand," Lou reached out and clutched her friend's hands inside her own. "A mother needs to know her baby is safe."

"I know that she was, Lou. I'm sorry that I reacted so harshly."

"Again, you don't have anything to apologize for. I understand, completely."

Charlie eased back into the chair and thought for a few seconds, "It looks like the girls are settled in here. Ty, why don't you take me back home after we have some of Lou's awesome smelling breakfast and you and Lou go on to the hospital to check on Amy and her dad? I'm feeling a little…, tired, so if it isn't too much trouble, Lou, maybe the girls could stay here with Lisa until you are finished at the hospital and Ty can bring Sammy home then? If Katie wants to come along, they would keep each other occupied for another night while you get things sorted out at home."

"Lisa would love to have the girls stay as long as they want. Lemme tell ya, she has been enjoying having them this morning, a lot, and it will make her day to have them stay a little longer. I will make a call and tell her what's going on, then, while you guys finish breakfast, I'll get my stuff together and take you up on the offer to hitch a ride to the hospital."

When the trio had arrived at 8S Ranch, Charlie got out of the passenger's seat and popped the rear door open for Lou, "You're it, for shotgun, that is."

Lou hopped off the tall running board and accepted the hug awaiting her. "You get some rest, hear me? Everything is being handled with the girls and I'll take care of your wonderful husband for you. There's nothing to worry about now."

"You've done a pretty good job with him all those years up until now, so I know he is in good hands," Charlie quipped, easing up and feeling more relaxed. "He _is_ sort of wonderful, isn't he?" she whispered, wrinkling her nose, a thankful smile inching across her lips. "Be sure and call once you know more from the hospital. I know Gram and Grandpa will want to know how Amy and Tim are doing as much as I do."

"Of course, Charlie. Talk to you later, OK?" Lou assured her overly stressed friend, and hugged her again.

* * *

The drive into Calgary was not quiet for long. Lou wasted no time in catching up with Ty about his own recovery and wanting to know as much as he would offer of how he was feeling about everything in general, Charlie's condition, both physically and mentally, their progress concerning Ty filing for legal joint custody of his new step daughter, and of course, Ahmed.

"I guess we all underestimated how crazy he really was," Ty started. "I never did like him, to be honest. It was hard for me to tell if it was just because my first impression of him was that he was a flaming asshole or if it was because I was a little jealous when Amy started working with him. I always had the feeling he was trying to wedge me and Amy apart. Looks like I may not have been so wrong, after all."

"If it's any consolation to you, I warned her abo…," cutting herself off and instantly regretting letting go of more insight that she intended.

"You warned her about, what, that Ahmed was making a move?"

"Look, Ty, you know how I am. I was bitchy-suspicious because of all the expensive gifts, the big paychecks, the tempting her with a chance to work with all the fancy horses, and offers of taking her to exotic places…., We argued about it, when I told her what I thought, and I probably just made things worse. If I did, I am so, so, sorry, Ty. She may have gone on that damned tour just to spite me as much as anything else."

"Well, Amy and I weren't in a good place, either, at the time. I think that deal with Charger really killed her trust in me. It was stupid of me to do it, I know it now, and I let Caleb talk me into it because I was so jealous of all the things Ahmed was giving to her when I couldn't even afford to pay attention to her like I should have been. It was just a perfect storm, I guess. He came back here just when we were in a bad place with each other and knew how to maximize the damage."

"She thinks you will never be able to forgive her, you know. I think that is the biggest thing she must get past now, even more so than recovering from the surgeries. You need to know that she feels like she is at fault for all of this, even with what happened yesterday afternoon and your crash the day before. She blames herself for Ahmed's actions and bringing him here to threaten not only her, but all of the people she cares about, all the way to the end."

"There is no way she could have known how screwed in the head he was, nor could any of the rest of us. None of us has ever had to deal with anyone who had billions of dollars and the power of a country's influence to throw around at will. You just expect people like that to be different, because, well, they _are_!

"It would be nice if you would tell her that one of these days, soon. This whole thing has practically destroyed her self-confidence again. As if facing what happened between you two isn't enough, now she blames herself for almost getting Dad killed, and you being in that accident, and for putting all the rest of us at risk. She has taken this really hard, Ty, and honestly, I think you are the only one who can help her to move on with whatever she decides to do with her life from here on. Yours is the opinion that matters most, even more so than Grandpa's and mine. It always has been, since about the first two months after you got here," Lou twisted a reflective smile, aiming to leave the message intact but allow her 'adopted brother' the time to work out a course of action on his own.

* * *

The parking lot at the hospital was almost full and it took a few extra trips up and down the rows of vehicles to find a slot big enough to pull the big red truck into. " _Damn this place!"_ Ty muttered _._

Lou heard the comment, "It is hard to get a good feeling about this place, isn't it? Seems like the only time we are here is when something bad has happened."

Ty knew the people inside were only there to help, and it was a damn good thing for all of them that they were, but it was still the kind of place you only came to if something terrible had happened. He hated everything about the place, the smell, the noise, the worrying, the waiting. All of it. This had been his destination far too frequently lately to be able to appreciate it for anything else.

After checking in with the receptionist at the front desk, Ty and Lou made a bee line for room 305. As they walked together and found the elevator, Ty thought he had said to himself, " _Her head! It can't be good for her if she injured her head again when she fell."_

Lou surprised him when she responded, "The doctor seems to think she avoided a concussion, this time. Good thing. I don't want to think about what another head injury would mean for her."

The elevator emptied in front of them in a perceivable rush as people seemed to be as anxious to get out of the place as they were. The ride up was quick and when the door opened they could see Jack pacing toward them in the hallway outside the waiting room.

"Ty? I'm surprised to see you here today," his life mentor said as he extended his hand for a shake, "Well, not that surprised."

"Hey, Jack. Have you gotten to talk to her yet?"

"Yeah, about an hour ago. Her doctor told us that he wanted to take another scan to make sure we don't have a repeat of last time when we thought the worst had passed and damn near let it kill her when it came back to bite us in the ass."

"You want to be sure," Ty agreed. "Absolutely the right move to check closer."

Jack pointed over Ty's shoulder and said, "Speakin' of, here she comes now."

Ty turned to see the gurney humming down the center of the hallway with a nurse on either end guiding it. The two men stepped aside to allow them passage through the door where Lou was already waiting, and as it passed Amy looked shocked to see the man she least expected to find waiting at her room, "Ty?"

They continued through the door and closed it behind them, offering the patient privacy while they transferred her to the room's bed. After a few minutes the door swung open and the nurses pushed the empty gurney out into the hallway, "She's ready now," one of them said, and the two entered, Ty lagging hesitantly behind.

"Hey," he offered the most casual greeting he knew, taking the remaining steps to stand next to her bed. "I don't see any new holes in your head," attempting to break the mood with his tried and true tactic of relieving the tension he knew she must be feeling.

Amy took a couple of seconds to decide she could not pretend that his being here for her did not have a profound impact on how she felt about, well, everything, and held out her arms, squeezing his waist when he bent down to meet her embrace tightly enough to make him flinch.

"Oh! Ty! I'm so sorry! I forgot all about your accident!"

"It's OK, Amy. I'm fine, honest."

"Yeah, right," taking a few more searching seconds to look him over, "old married man!"

"That's me. And if we can't slow down this meeting in the hospital thing we have going on these days, I'm going to get a lot older way sooner than I should."

 _To be continued_


	53. Chapter 53

CHAPTER 53

A stiff mountain breeze caught the collar of Amy's coat and pushed it against her face when she looked toward the gray skies west of Edmonton. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, although you couldn't tell. This latest front moving in smothered most of the light behind its thickening clouds making it appear closer to sunset. She was in no particular rush, but there was one more thing she had to do while in the little town of Devin before heading back to Riverside Meadows Ranch and getting ready for her first date with Win Easton, the construction crew foreman in charge of the stable project he was building for J.D. Pittinger and his daughter, Liz.

As Amy dropped a funny get-well card she had found at the local pharmacy into its appropriate slot at the post office she thought about Charlie and Ty and wondered how they were handling her latest setback. It had to be so, so hard for her friends to know with such certainty that their fate was upon them when otherwise they should have had everything in place to live a full and happy life together. They had a beautiful home to come home to every evening, a wonderful family to support them, two stable incomes, and the most precious little daughter that she could imagine. Charlie was very lucky, all things considered, to have such a loyal and trustworthy man by her side to share her final days with. There must be a certain contentment in knowing she would be leaving her daughter in the care of such a dedicated and loving parent after she was gone, if the courts would just hurry a little more and approve Ty's bid to be her legally shared custodian. Amy knew things would have been much different for the little girl if Charlie had not found Ty Borden when she did. Things might have been much different for all of them.

Amy was aware there was more to the relationship between Ty and Charlie than love, at least the kind of love that usually brought two people together in a traditional marriage. She knew without doubt that Charlene McCrary had fallen head over heels in love with her biggest mistake, the man she should never have let go, and felt like Ty cared very much for the confident, drop dead gorgeous cowgirl he had met that day in the clinic, the meeting she had witnessed in part when she had come to her estranged fiancé's workplace to apologize and attempt to make up. Ty and Sammy had taken to each other so naturally that Amy supposed there must have been some sort of divine intervention at work for them to have found each other when they did. The resourceful man she cared so much about seemed to have found purpose beyond taking advantage of reduced study commitments after vet school. Ty loved being a dad and she hoped for his sake that he would not have to give up that responsibility when Charlie passed away.

Reminiscing about the what ifs and the might have beens served no better purpose than to remind Amy of her biggest personal loss and the regrets that would surely haunt her for the rest of her life, but she thought about Sammy every single day. Even after all these years, she could still remember what it felt like when her mother tried to explain that her father would not be coming to see her anymore. To a five-year-old, there was no real difference between total separation from loved ones and the finality of death. All she knew at the time was that her daddy was not there, she missed him terribly, and he wasn't coming back, and now Sammy would be faced with the same shattering situation.

* * *

It had been just over two months since the recovering victim of another violent attack from the man with whom she had once invested so much of her life had decided to take J.D. and Liz Pittinger up on their job offer. It was now her responsibility to oversee the design process and keep an eye on the construction crews to make sure her ideas were being implemented as the stable transitioned from a set of plans to a life-sized dream facility that any horse lover would admire as the best there was in this part of Canada.

The doorbell rang and she knew it must be Win coming to pick her up for their date. It had been a long time since she had experienced first date jitters. This was nothing to be taken too seriously, she reasoned, just the simplest way to get Lou and Liz to back off the match making quest and get one of the boxes checked off the list of bullet points included in her plan of getting her life back on track.

Walking slowly across the floor, Amy almost called to Win through the door to say she was not feeling well and should stay home, but figured she would never hear the end of it from either of the would-be matchmakers.

"Hey," she said as the door somehow managed to swing open.

"Hey, yourself!" he responded, looking pleased with what he saw. "You look fantastic! Are you ready for a night out on the town?"

"Thank you," wishing she could hide the flush in her cheeks, "Yes, I am ready," and finished putting on a heavier coat after the burst of bitter cold came inside to remind her how far north she was.

The ride into Edmonton entailed the confident crew foreman attempting to engage his passenger in conversation, any conversation, and Amy could tell he was beginning to get frustrated at her lack of participation. "Do you always talk this much?" he jabbed in an attempt to jar her out of her mood, "I have hardly been able to get a word in edge-wise," looking straight at her in daring a response.

"I'm sorry," explaining being so lackadaisical. "I know I haven't been very cheerful tonight. It's just that I got some news about a friend this morning that has me feeling a little sad for her and some people I care a lot about."

"Sorry to hear that, Amy. I hope everything works out for them."

"Me too."

"I hope you like Italian," the driver mentioned, shifting to a more positive objective, "I have a table reserved at the best little restaurant in town. One of my friends owns it so we have an excellent table, all the way in the back where it's nice and warm," he chuckled, noticing the way she had huddled toward the heater vent on the dash of his truck.

Amy noticed that he was paying close attention to her every move and tried to show her appreciation to his attentiveness, "That is a plus, regardless of the food, but it sounds like a really nice place. I'm starved."

"Great! You will not be disappointed," he promised.

* * *

Winton Easton had been a perfect gentleman. She had unsuccessfully badgered him about his real first name until after the second nightcap when she finally took up the dare to swap the information if she would agree to try a sip of his Bourbon Highball #2. He laughed so hard at seeing her scrunched up face that he finally agreed to tell her his name was handed down from his great grandfather, a hero in the big war during the allied invasion of Europe at Normandy.

"Are you sure I can't get you something to drink? It seems sort of unfair to be the only one taking advantage of a fine bar like this one."

"No, thank you. Like I said, I don't drink alcohol," she stated flatly after the second attempt to have him accept her standing on the matter.

"C'mon, every likes a drink now and then," he challenged her moderation for the third time, not giving up on thinking she could use some loosing up to better relax and make the most of their evening together.

"I said, I _do-not-drink_ , and as a matter if fact, I don't like being around people that think they can't socialize without it. I have seen too many good lives destroyed because of it and I have no intention of drinking to please someone else."

"Soooorry! Guess I've struck a nerve…," feeling more and more agitated at being dismissed.

"OK, I would like to go home now. The weather is getting worse outside and I think we should leave."

The man used to being the one calling the shots slid his chair away from the table and bowed at the waist and mocked a retort, "Yes, Ma'am, as you wish!"

* * *

The longest one hour drive in history ended with Amy stepping out of the brand new jacked up 4x4 into a fresh two-inch show that had accumulated around the guest house she had been using as her home away from home. Scarcely a word had been spoken between the two during the journey out of Edmonton and she had begun to feel badly at seeming so ungrateful for what had been a better than anticipated evening up until Win's behavioral discrepancy after downing a couple too many Bourbon Highball #2's.

"I want you to know that I really did enjoy our dinner…, before you started drinking. It's just not the kind of thing I enjoy doing myself, or seeing other people compromise themselves when they do. I am truly sorry, Win."

"I should be the one apologizing, Amy. It's not your fault. I guess I have been used to girls who have a different agenda than you do, and I get that now. I hope I haven't offended you to the point that it interferes with our work. I think we have done a pretty good job in getting this place in the dry before all this crappy weather got here and have something we can both take a lot of pride in."

"We do! I am very pleased with the way the building has turned out so far. No, I think we should be fine while we finish up the project, but with Christmas coming up in a couple of days, I am going home for a few weeks to spend some time with my folks. We can reset everything when I get back, OK?"

"Great! I'm glad to hear you say that," he replied, notably humbler now that the effects of Bourbon had diminished.

Amy shoved his door closed and made a dash for the cabin. She made it inside and shook the snow off her coat before hanging it on the hook beside the door thinking things could have gone much worse than they did, even if the evening had taken a disappointing detour. The threat of a man turning on her, especially one that she trusted, was too fresh on her mind to ignore. Win had come way too close to getting out of control and there was no way she was ever going to let that happen to her again, even if it meant being alone on the coldest nights of the years ahead.

Slipping off her boots and turning down the quilt on the bed, the lonesome trainer-now turned consultant went into the bathroom to take off her makeup and get ready for bed. When she pulled her phone out of her pocket she realized the ringer had been left in the off position and there was a string of six messages waiting to be answered. " _What the…_?"

After thumbing her way through the menu, Amy saw that Lou had called no less than four times, one call was from Lisa, and her heart stopped at seeing that the last one was from Ty. Supposing that she should get the messages from her sister out of the way first she began at the earliest one, ' _Amy, its Lou. I just got word that Ty is on the way to the hospital again to see about Charlie. I don't know any details yet, but, Amy, it's not good_. _I will call you back when I get more news_.'

It was frightening to hear her older sister so shaken. Charlie's condition must have taken another downturn and Amy knew there was very little room left for her condition to fall.

The second message was more calm on Lou's part, this time obviously on the speaker phone inside her Explorer, but there was still a sense of urgency, ' _Hey, it's me, again. I am on my way to the McCrary's to pick up Sammy. Clint and Margie are going to stay at the hospital tonight with Ty. I think you should get home as quickly as you can. I don't know any more details about Charlie, but with Clint and Margie both going to be with her tonight, well, it sounds serious. I'll call back when I get home with Sammy_."

It was no secret that Charlie and those close to her would soon have to face the inevitable. You can prepare for times like this all you want but for people like Amy there simply was no way to be completely ready when the time was at hand, even if her sorrow was for a friend she hadn't known all that long. She thought, _'I can't believe how badly I feel about this, how much it hurts to think about what this will do to Sammy.'_

Before she had come back from her inner search for answers, Amy almost tossed the phone when it caught her completely off guard and buzzed in her tight grasp, "Lou! What is going on?"

"Hey. Well, I made it home with Sammy. I went ahead and put her to bed first, so we could talk more openly."

"It sounds bad?" the sincerely concerned friend of the patient asked.

"Yeah, I'm afraid it is." Lou's words seemed so harsh, as few as they were. "Her family is with her tonight, except for Sammy, of course. She had asked me last week if I would be available to take her if her condition continued to deteriorate. She knew this was coming, Amy. She is ready."

"But, she told me she wanted to make it until Christmas! She wanted that more than anything! She told me…,"

"Amy, she has far exceeded what the doctors expected a long time ago. They think the only reason she has made it this far is because she was in such good shape before she got sick. That, and she is just too damn stubborn to give up because she wanted to make sure Sammy's adoption papers were approved for Ty before she had to leave them behind."

These words were too real, too heavy to bear, and as Amy tried to ask about Ty, her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat to try again, "How is Ty holding up? Has he still been trying to work full hours at the clinic and take care of Charlie and Sammy, too?"

"Yes, he has. I'll bet he has lost another ten pounds in the last month alone, and he had never gained back what he lost after…., you know," stopping short of dredging up his near demise after their horrible breakup.

"It's OK, Lou. It's not a secret, the damage I have caused."

"Stop blaming yourself, Amy. There were many reasons for that to have happened the way it did. One of those reasons is gone, so…,"

"Lou!"

"I'm sorry, Amy, but after the things he did to you and to Ty, I will never forgive him, even if he did pay the ultimate price for it."

Amy couldn't think of anything to say in answer to her sister's evident loathing of the deposed crown prince, leaving a long silence on her end of the conversation before she tried to tie up loose ends and get to bed, "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Well, there is one more thing…," her voice trailing off with a noticeable hesitancy.

"What is it, Lou? Just spit it out."

"Charlie wants to talk to you, in person, if at all possible."

"What? Why would she want to talk to me at a time like this?"

"She wouldn't tell Margie, but I think it has to do with wanting someone to watch over Sammy and Ty, someone besides her grandparents that can better relate to what Sammy will be experiencing after she is gone. I suspect you may have already spoken about whatever it is she has on her mind."

The proposal had been brushed across during their picnic beside the river. Amy had expected for Charlie to forget about what she had asked of her after she had had time to think about it. Apparently, that was not the case. "Yes, we talked about some things once before. Do I have time to wait until tomorrow morning before I start home?"

"I wouldn't put myself in any unnecessary danger if I were you, Amy. The weather is atrocious up where you are tonight and it would serve no purpose to have you go to sleep behind the wheel and have an accident before you got here anyway. Starting tomorrow morning would be the wisest move."

"OK. I will see you sometime after lunch. We can talk while I am on the road if there are any updates. I just hope I don't let Charlie down."

"You can only do what you can to get here, Amy. Please, be careful, and get some sleep."

"I'll try. OK, goodnight, Lou. If you talk to any of them tomorrow morning, please tell them I am on my way."

"Of course, I will. Goodnight."

* * *

Thankfully, J.D. Pittinger and his family were early risers so there was no need to wait for them to wake up before she told them she was leaving to be with her family and try to see a friend who was, sadly, on her death bed.

"You have already stayed longer than I expected you to, Amy. I appreciate the way you have stood your ground to all those construction guys and gotten our stable looking the way we envisioned it would be. Wonderful job!" he said as he reached across the table and plucked an envelope out of his wife's hand. "This is a little bonus for all your hard work and dedication these past few weeks, and hopefully, an incentive to come on back up here when the weather breaks, if not sooner, to see this thing through to the end."

"Thank you, J.D., but your help in clearing up the mess with Ahmed was more than enough of a bonus to me."

"Nonsense! I was glad to do it! That sonofabitch got what he deserved and there was no way I was going to allow him to come into my province and cause one of our finest families any hardship over his arrogant and callous actions."

"Again, it made all the difference for us in putting a very dark time behind us." Amy stood up from her chair at the table to give the proud older man a hug.

"How is your old man, by the way?"

"He is being his usual pitiful self, causing everyone at home to contemplate drawing straws to see who gets to smack him for all the wining he is doing," she chuckled.

"That's good news. Send your family my best wishes, please."

"I will certainly do that. I need to get on the road because I don't have any time to spare. It will be plain luck if I make it to the hospital in time to see Charlie as it is."

"Good luck to you, Amy," Hallie said. "Don't forget to take care of yourself, too, and be careful on the way home."

Mrs. Pittinger stood from her chair and extended her arms to accept her friend into a heartfelt hug, and Liz picked up one of her guests' bags and opened the door, "At least the weather has eased up a bit, so the trip shouldn't be all that bad."

"Thank goodness for that!" she agreed and pushed the remote starter on her new truck.

As the two friends walked out to the driveway, "I never did get a chance to ask about the big date," Liz raised a curious brow.

"Call me after I get out on the highway. We can talk about it then."

Noticing the lack of anticipated enthusiasm, Liz wrinkled her brow into a furrow, "Of course. You can count on it," and gave Amy her best send off from the Riverside Meadows Ranch.

 _To be continued_


	54. Chapter 54

CHAPTER 54

Amy was thankful for a calm, sunny, day to make the two hour, forty-five-minute drive down from Edmonton, one less thing to worry about on the return trip home than the weather would have provided the day before. She had not received any new information from Lou since taking a quick bathroom break at the Starlite Diner Car in Bowden, not making it past the pastry display case under the counter where she had ordered a coffee to go before a fresh cinnamon roll caught her eye. ' _I owe it to myself_ ," she thought.

Calgary's unmistakable skyline was just coming into view as the plains transitioned into the more familiar foothills of home. "Lou, I'm coming into Calgary now. I wanted to let you know that I am going straight to the hospital on my way in."

"That's good. I still haven't heard anything since I last called you. I just hope that Charlie is up to seeing you when you get there."

"Me too. I will let you know what happens as soon as I get back on the road after I am finished at the hospital."

Lou could tell her sister was feeling nervous, "OK. I love you."

"Love you, too."

Traffic in downtown Calgary was awful. Last minute shoppers were out in full force and she worried that the least little dust-up between two impatient drivers could cost her an easy hour, maybe more.

Getting distracted and a shade pissed at having to sit at the same stoplight for the second time because some aggressive driver had blocked her lane when they should have stayed put on their side of the road, she jumped when the phone rang in her pocket. "Ty?"

"Hey, Amy. Are you close?"

"I'm sorry, Ty. I'm no more than two blocks away. I can see the hospital from where I am sitting. Some _dufus_ is just sitting in the middle of this intersection and no one can move because of him trying to hog his way where he shouldn't be," she railed, taking a tentative gulp knowing he would not have called if time was not an issue.

"It's OK, Amy. No need to be too upset. Charlie has been sleeping for the past hour or so, but they usually come in her room and wake her up for one thing or another about the time she gets comfortable."

"That must be frustrating for her. OK, traffic is moving again. I should be there in a few minutes."

"Listen, the reason I called was to ask if you could meet me in the cafeteria first, before you go to her room? I have something to give you before you go in to see her and I should probably tell you a few things, too."

"Sure. See you then."

 _'_ _What could he have to give me that was so urgent, and what would he want to talk about?' she wondered._

When she entered the cafeteria, Amy saw Ty sitting at a table alone with two steaming cups of coffee placed on either side of a white envelope _._ "Hey."

"Hey, Amy. I really appreciate your doing this for her…, and me."

"You know I would do anything I could to help, right?"

Ty was sure to make eye contact before he nodded, "I know. But I really do appreciate this, seeing as this is such an unpleasant place to be."

Curious as to the reason for his call, "What is it you needed to see me about?"

"Well, Charlie wrote seven letters this week and told me to make sure that every one of them got delivered when the time was right. One was for the guys at her business explaining how she had set things up so they would be able to keep their jobs with the University of BC heading up the project under Clint's supervision, for now, and one was for Clint and Margie. Another one was Sammy's with extra stories to go along with the videos she made for her, and one for Sammy's teacher at school. Then she wrote a letter to the judge presiding over my custody hearing, one to me, and finally, this one, it's for you."

"Me? Why…,"

"I don't know exactly what she wanted to say to you, but mine was a list of things that needed to be done before the hearing date, everything from what I should say to what I should wear, among other things."

"Of course, she did," Amy smiled at the image in her mind of the determined mother, so desperately ill, still feeling the need to take care of the ones she loved.

"Before you read this, I need to make sure you are prepared for what you are going to see when you go into her room."

"Ty, I've been in dozens of hospital rooms to visit patients."

"Not like this one," he warned. "Charlie has changed a lot since you last saw her. I don't believe you would even recognize her. She weighs about eighty pounds now and wears a big scarf on her head to keep warm. The last couple of days have been a struggle because of not being able to catch her breath. Her eyes, that's the hardest part, because the light is fading and that sparkle she always had is gone. Everything is more labored now. It will be hard for you to see her like that, Amy. I just wanted to give you enough of a warning so as not to be overwhelmed you when you walk into her room."

As if she wasn't scared enough of what she might see, Amy tried to hide a tenuous inhale to steady her nerves and took a slow sip of her coffee from an unsteady cup.

"I will give you some space to read your letter. Just come and get me when you fin…,"

"No!" Amy reached out and grabbed his wrist as he stood. "I really wish you would stay here with me. I _need_ you to be here with me…, please?"

"If you want me here, then I'll stay," he reassured his hesitant ex.

Ty watched the pages, two of them, it appeared, quivering ever so slightly in her hands as she read them and patiently waited for her to finish.

Amy laid the letter on the table and folded it into thirds so it would fit back inside the envelope. Her face told him the words had delivered a significant impact, "Are you OK?"

"Yes, but I need a minute before we go up to see her."

She had been in the public restroom for a few minutes already, but Ty was willing to give Amy all the time she needed to collect her courage. He knew it was extremely awkward for her to be drawn into this situation, given their failed relationship, and tried to put into perspective how much her loyalty to him as a friend had been put to the test since Charlie had asked to come along on the first trail ride with the girls.

"I'm ready," Amy said, catching him lost inside his thoughts.

"This way," he directed with an extended hand.

She hadn't yet realized it, but when they reached the door of Charlie's room, Amy discovered had reached around Ty's upper arm and steadied herself with a very firm grip. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't realize what I was doing."

"It's OK. Here we are," and hesitated to make sure she was really ready.

When she entered the room full of beeping machines, wires, and hoses, Amy saw a tiny patient lying in the bed, colorless from a summer and fall spent mostly indoors. She began to feel light headed, trying to sneak in a deep breath and hold it long enough to restore her confidence because if she let it go too soon she was certain she would wilt right down to the floor. It was a good thing Ty had briefed her on what to expect when she got this far or else this visit would have already been over and the nurses would have been in here trying to revive her.

"Hey, Charlie," she whispered, not sure of how to approach a conversation with the shadow of a woman she had last seen.

"Amy, I am so glad you could make it to see me," the greeting barely audible. "Sit!" Charlie swept her hand toward the recliner beside her bed. "Ty, would you raise me up, please?"

Ty looked at the buttons on the side of her bed and picked the one which should tilt her upward from the waist so she could see the visitor in the chair below her.

"I see you have my letter."

"Yes. I just now read it, before I came up."

"Good…, good."

Speaking was a chore for the once outspoken bundle of energy that Charlene McCrary had always been. Amy's heart was tearing in two with each passing moment as she struggled with what to say next.

Charlie expected things to be awkward, at least until she could explain the letter in first person, "Ty, why don't you go down to the cafeteria and ask them if they have any more of those fruity crepes left? I'll bet Amy would love to have one just as much as I would."

When he had kissed her forehead and left the room, Charlie smiled at her friend and said, "Gotta keep him busy so he doesn't drive me crazy," and lightly chuckled.

Amy did her best to offer a comforting smile. "I know, but it's just because he wants to take care of you the only way he knows how."

"That's true," she had a slight smile as she sighed. "The letter, what do you think?"

"I would be more than happy to do it, Charlie, if the court goes along with it. But, why me? Surely there would be someone else who is better at talking about things like this than me. What if I say the wrong thing, or…,"

"Amy, all you have to do is speak from your heart. You may not think so, but you have it in you, I know you do."

"Well, you can count on me. I promise to do my best."

"I have enough faith in you for both of us. I wouldn't have asked this of you if I didn't think it was the right thing to do," Charlie said as she reached out her skeletal hand.

Amy stood and held out her hand to accept it, but Charlie's hand appeared so fragile that she was afraid to take hold of it. The patient surprised her visitor when she surrounded the cautious hand with the power of a firm grip and was obviously delighted to see how shocked Amy was to realize the strength she still possessed.

They remained standing together until Ty pushed the door open and peeked inside to see if he might be interrupting. "I have sin food," he boasted.

"What?" Amy had no idea what he meant.

"That's what I call anything the doctors tell me I can't have. If I eat pastry it's probably a sin in their eyes, but I still enjoy it. What's it gonna do, kill me?"

Amy wished she could laugh, but without thinking she reached up to brush Charlie's cheek wishing she could find a way to comfort her.

Charlie took a tiny nibble off one end of the treat. Ty knew his exercise was exactly that, an exercise, but he didn't complain. She needed to have her fun so he went along with it even if it was at his expense.

"It is a shame that we didn't have the time to get to know one another better," the frail woman broke the long silence. "You would have hated me if I hadn't gotten sick, though," she smiled.

"I don't know, Charlie, sometimes it takes more than fighting over a man to keep friends apart," Amy was quick to answer, knowing her friend needed to exercise her sense of humor to help in getting through the final days.

"I'm right here!" Ty protested, but took a little pleasure in seeing the two of them share a moment.

Without warning, a nurse poked her head through the crack in the door and said, "Hello, everyone. It's time to do a tune-up on our patient. Give me about thirty minutes, if you will, and then you can come back when I am finished."

Charlie opened her arms and Amy bent down to return a hug.

Ty watched them as the embrace went on realizing this would probably be the last time they would ever be together. The "lasts" were getting hard to take. From birth, he reasoned, we are all conditioned to expect the next step to be farther, faster, higher than the one before. Every day was supposed to be better than the last and failure was only a setback until you could figure out how to fix it. Our entire lives are built around taking the next step up the ladder and never looking down, until one day, there could be no more next steps upward. Eventually everyone must reach the peak in their lives. From then on, everything is about learning how to accept letting go of the urge to reach up and instead to try and not fall too fast. He had done a lot of soul searching in the last year and a half, especially these past few months, and one of the questions that he couldn't seem to answer was whether it would be better to go quickly and let the circumstances fall where they may or to have time, like Charlie, affording the opportunity to get all your affairs in order before you leave this earth.

Life really sucked sometimes. This was one of those times.

Ty took Amy down to the waiting room to see Clint and Margie before she left.

"Amy, I am so glad you were able to make it!" Margie said.

The visitor accepted her grandmotherly hug, "Yes, I am glad, too."

"Did you two have a nice talk?" Clint asked.

Surprising herself with the answer, "We did! We actually did!"

"Good! It was important for her to see you, too, Amy. She made sure we all had our marching orders," the older man scoffed.

"She is an amazing woman," Amy offered. "I can't see myself being as strong as she has been under these circumstances."

"We never know what we are capable of until we have to face the realities of life," Clint reasoned. "Sometimes we even surprise ourselves."

"I suppose you are right, Clint," she agreed. "Listen, it's going to be dark before you know it and I need to get home and take care of a couple of things while there is still some light." Amy considered the strain showing in Charlie's grandmother's eyes, "Please don't hesitate to call me if there is anything I can do to help."

"Thank you, Amy. I mean that."

This time Amy was the one to draw the older woman into a hug. When she turned toward the door, Ty excused himself to accompany her to the elevator.

While they waited for the door to open, Ty turned to her and said, "That was pretty awesome of you, what you just did for them."

"I am glad I was able to do it," she replied, and he nodded, knowing she meant what she said.

"I hope she didn't ask too much of you in the letter. Being shy about telling someone what she wanted was not one of her weaknesses."

"You will find out soon enough," was her serious response. "I would like to think about the things Charlie said to me before I talk to anyone about it. I will just have to figure out how to do what she asked me to do, that's all."

"Why can't you tell me?"

"Because I need time to think, and if we talk, well, I don't want to mess this up. Please, just trust me, OK?"

Amy gave him one of the looks he had almost forgotten she had in her arsenal, the one meant to quash any resistance to her will by using two of the most persuasively blue eyes he had ever seen, always swaying the advantage in any of their debates. He figured he had better leave well enough alone.

* * *

It had turned out to be a spectacular winter day. Seldom had there been a December twenty seventh as sunny and warm as this one in southwestern Alberta. A chinook had blown in the morning of her memorial service and the phenomenon had everyone in attendance convinced that Charlie had special ordered it ahead of time to her exact specifications.

Charlene McCrary-Borden had come to the end of her journey. She had beaten the odds presented to her by her doctors back in the early part of the year and made it all the way to Christmas Eve before she finally lost her battle to stay and oversee her husband secure her daughter's future as her legal guardian.

She had told Amy months ago that her goal was Christmas, but she had adjusted the date to include the court hearing on the fifth of January. Raw determination had carried her to miss her target by only nine days. That was about sixty days beyond what the experts had told them to expect.

Amy stood in the opening between two patches of evergreens where Charlie's bench stood watch over the beautiful snow covered valley between 8S ranch and the mountains. Ty had asked her to come with him just to get away from everyone left talking among themselves after the service. They all meant well, but he had endured all the sympathy he could tolerate for one day.

"What is this?" she asked, using her gloved fingers to pull the melting ice away from an inscription on a granite stone off to the right, next to the trees.

 _'_ _NEVER TOO FAR, NEVER TOO HIGH. LOOK BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS AND MY LOVE WILL ALWAYS BE THERE WAITING. – C. McCrary 2014.'_

"This is so beautiful. Where did it come from?"

Ty's eyes were fixed on the monument and he answered without removing them, "It was something Charlie said to me the night she brought me here to tell me she was sick. It was a beautiful night. The lights in the valley just seemed to go on forever. She must have been thinking about what she could say to Sammy and her grandparents to help them remember her.

"She certainly knew how to express her feelings. This place will inspire beautiful memories for everyone, I am sure. And, for you too. Sammy will love it here when she gets older."

Ty wasn't in the mood for talking but he took comfort in listening to Amy's voice. He remembered there was something about the way she spoke that soothed his anxieties when they were daydreaming, or even when talking mostly about nothing at all.

"She loved you so much. I admire her for understanding how to make you see that."

His longest running friend didn't seem to be having any success in shaking him out of the sanctuary his thoughts had taken him to. Experience had taught her that when he got like this to let him work it out in his head on his own terms, and when he was ready, then they could talk it out.

 _To be continued_


	55. Chapter 55

CHAPTER 55

The mirror seemed to be playing tricks on her. As she stared at her reflection, Amy threatened changing her outfit for the third time in the past thirty minutes. _'Everyone will just have to wait,'_ she decided.

"Amy? Are you about ready to go? It will be time to leave, soon," Lou said as she tapped on her door and peeked inside to see what could possibly be keeping her unpunctual sister hidden away in her room for so long.

Amy's eyes stayed focused upon her image in the mirror, which appeared to be dissatisfied with what it saw, "This seems too informal for a court hearing, don't you think?"

"Amy! You look fantastic."

"Maybe a business outfit would be better. Can I borrow one of yours?"

"Amy, what is the matter? Why are you making such a big deal about what you are wearing to Ty's hearing? _C'mon_ , you look perfect, she urged."

"It's not just a hearing, Lou!" Amy snapped, "What if the judge thinks I am not taking her seriously when she sees that I have worn something like _this_ into her courtroom?"

Lou let out an exasperated sigh. After rushing through getting the headstrong twosome of Katie and Sammy all set up to stay behind with Lisa and urging the rest of the family to be prepared for supporting one of their own during his day in court, and getting _herself_ ready somewhere in the chaotic scramble, "Why on earth would it matter what the judge thinks about what you wear? That is a perfectly appropriate dress for almost anything…, short of a funeral, maybe. I don't get it."

"You will see when we get there."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I'd rather not talk about it right now. I still have some things to figure out before the hearing starts."

The perceptive Fleming sister knew her ten-year-younger sibling all too well. An epiphany sprung up in Lou's face, her brow raising slightly over the sparkle within enlightened eyes, "You are going to testify in Ty's behalf, aren't you?"

"Lou!" Amy grumbled, _'Never could keep a secret from her.'_ "Yes, but don't say anything to the others, please. All I need is to have ten more opinions about what I should say in court floating around my head to get me confused enough to blow this for Ty…, and Sammy!" She had been so absorbed in coming up with a convincing presentation in Ty's behalf that she had almost forgotten what was at stake for Charlie's daughter as well. "I can't let them down, Lou, I just can't."

Lou studied her sister, putting two and two together, "You know all you have to do is say what's in your heart, right….?"

"I know."

"You'll do fine, and you look beautiful, Amy."

"But, I want the judge to take me seriously. I-,"

Lou grasped her hands around Amy's arms and gave a firm squeeze, " _Everyone_ who hears what you have to say today is going to take you very seriously, even in that dress."

Her temper spiked in frustration at what the closest member of her own family had just said to her, but when Amy saw the sly smile slide across her sister's lips it reminded her that the world was not coming to an end…, as long as she didn't screw everything up.

* * *

"All rise."

The court clerk readied the courtroom for Judge Melissa Standridge, the presiding authority over Ty's custody hearing, and when the judge reached the bench, "You may be seated."

After everyone had settled and the clerk had announced the case number, Judge Standridge began with the formalities, "We are here to consider the petition of one, Tyler Borden, for full custody and legal adoption of the minor, Samantha Christine Harris. Mr. Borden, I trust you have acquired adequate legal representation?"

The man sitting in the chair beside Ty stood and answered, "Yes, Your Honor. I will be Mr. Borden's legal counsel."

"Alright, then, Counselor," ordered Judge Standridge, "let's begin."

The next five minutes moved along slowly with Ty's attorney, a longtime friend of the McCrary family, laying out his client's eligibility for the action. He was patient in sustaining a positive atmosphere while addressing the judge's obvious concerns about the feasibility of a young single working man taking on legal obligation for a six year old female child with no partner to help in the day to day responsibilities of raising her. Winning over the reputably tough juvenile specialist's confidence would be essential to her decision to allow Ty's petition to succeed.

Jack, Lou, Clint, Margie, as well as their friends, Scott and Caleb, began swapping worried looks among themselves, and Amy echoed their trepidation as it became more and more apparent that the judge had serious reservations as to whether this would be the best situation for the child. She held nothing back in pushing for specific answers to the questions she wished to address, a stickler for the truth in details, and the presiding authority of this courtroom did not seem to be swayed favorably by the attorneys' answers.

"Thank you, Counselor. I think we should hear from Mr. Borden now," flicking two fingers toward the petitioner to summon him, "Please, step forward and take the oath so you can tell the court why we are all here today."

Her questioning began sternly, almost as if trying to rattle him. It worried each of the ones that knew him well because they could tell he was getting agitated. The barrage seemed like an unfair attack upon their trusted friend's character and every last one of them held their breath, praying that he could manage his temper until the questioning was completed.

After a few minutes of the rapid-fire test of his will, the judge jotted down a few notes and said, "Mr. Borden, I have one final question for you." Judge Standridge leaned slightly toward him and softened the tone of her prior protocol. "I need to be honest with you, Ty. I find it a bit of a reach to understand why a young man such as yourself, just now at the onset of a demanding career and with so much of your own situation left to figure out, would wish to accept total guardianship as a single parent over a six-year-old child that is not your own? How about we slow down and take a few minutes and you tell the court, in your own words, why going through with this undertaking is so important to you?"

Ty straightened up in his chair and thought, _'Wow! This is it. This is my last chance not to let Charlie and Sammy down._ _I'm only burying myself deeper every time I open my mouth?_ _Where should I even start?'_

"I would have asked the same thing of myself, Your Honor, if this were only a year ago, but one thing I have learned in growing up is that no matter how good or how bad you think your life is at any given point, things are bound to change." He shifted in his chair, a nervous reaction to being put on the spot with everything hanging in the balance, "I had been through a rough few months before I first met Sammy and her Mom," intentionally bowing his head because he did not want Amy seeing him relive the pain he still felt when forced to face the memory. "I was just beginning to get my life back to normal and accept that the plans I had been making were no longer in my future…," he paused to get the picture of the moment in his mind's eye, "when I literally ran into the two of them one evening at the clinic as I was on my way out the door. Charlie…, I mean, Charlene," he corrected himself for the sake of formality.

"That's OK, Ty," an aura of thoughtful compassion suddenly filled the room. "Let the court recognize that from here on, any reference to Charlie McCrary will be one and the same to the deceased mother of the child, Charlene McCrary. Go ahead, Ty."

"Thank you, Your Honor. Like I was saying, Charlie had discovered Sammy playing with a kitten in their barn and when Sammy asked to bring it into the house Charlie figured she had better get it checked out first to be sure it was healthy. Since it was late in the afternoon, they had hurried to get to the clinic before we closed. I was in a little too much of a hurry to get outside where my motorcycle was because I wanted to take a ride up to a favorite spot in the mountains to catch the sunset," pausing at being embarrassed with how sappy that probably sounded to everyone who he had just remembered were listening to every word, "Anyways…, I just busted right through the door and saw this beautiful little girl standing beside her mother holding a fluffy fat kitten. I could tell the little girl was upset and I couldn't go out the door without stopping to see what they needed, so I bent down and asked her what was wrong. Here she was, five years old and not the least bit shy, sticking out her hand to introduce herself and telling me that "Sassy" had hurt a paw and needed to be "fixed," as she called it. Charlie explained to me that Sammy had found Sassy in the barn that afternoon, but I knew as soon as Sammy handed that kitten to me, all purring and rubbing her chin over my finger to get me to scratch it, that the little stray had been tamed and taken care of for quite some time already, at least a week or two, I would say by the looks of her." He paused briefly to smile at the vision, "I remember getting down on one knee and looking her _straight in the eye_ and asking the question, "So, you just found her, eh?" and she sort of scrunched up her guilty little face as she looked me right back in the eye and smiled that crafty smile of hers, not even thinking about backing down. We had known each other for all of two minutes and had already shared a secret together, just between us," and smiled a bit wider. Thinking he may have gotten away from his point, "I'm sorry, Your Honor," flicking a glance toward the judge, "I just remembered that and…, I shouldn't have rambled so much."

"Go ahead, Ty, please, go on."

An uneasy nod to the judge preceded his continuing, then a brief pause taken for a perceptibly humbled glance around the room at his adopted family and friends, "I have thought about how I would explain all of this to the court, a lot, but it is hard for me to put it into words that have meaning to someone else, I mean, besides me and Sammy. I guess I can best describe where I am coming from, what I am trying to do now, by explaining how I grew up. You see, I know firsthand what it is like to grow up with a constant feeling of gloom and doom, of never knowing whether my Mom would be making dinner when I got home from school or be passed out drunk on the couch, or even worse, be in the bathroom trying to hide the marks on her face where my stepdad had beaten her senseless for doing whatever the excuse of the day was that had set him off and caused him to lose it with her. Mom and I were always on guard because his temper was held back by a hair trigger and ready to explode at any given second." Ty caught himself staring blankly at the floor as the despicable scenes played out in his head. "Nobody ever said "I love you" unless they were getting ready to tell me something bad, or to ask if I had any extra cash on me, and I don't ever remember trying to go to sleep at night without praying that I wouldn't hear Wade and my mom start to argue and lead to all the things that usually happened after that, and I hoped for all I was worth that I would be able to find a way out of there and never come back. I was eight, ten years old then."

Everyone in the room felt overwhelmed at hearing their friend describe his childhood so graphically and Ty could see it in their faces. Most had never heard him come right out and describe his tragic story so honestly, lacking one confidant that knew his story almost as well as he did. "Then, there was the day, when I was eleven, that I came through the door and saw Wade going off on Mom. He had her down on the floor, beating her…, she was unconscious…."

Ty choked up at visions that once terrorized his every dream and turned them into nightmares, then turned to address the judge directly, "The files on your desk have accounted for what happened next. Although I didn't realize it at first, that was what it finally took to get me out of there. I can't say that the alternative was all that much better, though, even if most of the problems with my foster placements were mostly my fault, in looking back."

He had the feeling it was time to stop because, _'How much worse can this get?'_ His gut told him that he was failing miserably and he took in a slow, deep breath as he looked up to face those listening so intently to his testimony, "I think what I could tell you about my reason for wanting to do this is…, because I know what it is like to grow up without the most important things…, like knowing you have someone you can trust and depend on to take care of you, or having someone there to tell you that they love you and that everything is going to be alright. I have always wondered what my life could have been like if I had been raised in a more supportive environment, if I wouldn't have had so many setbacks early on."

Ty's jaw took a determined set, a staunch look cast across his face, "I will never settle for standing by and doing nothing when I feel like I am supposed to step up and make a difference. Sammy is a very smart, trusting, and loving, beautiful little girl," he said, nodding at his conviction. "Her mother and great grandparents have done a wonderful job of raising her and she already has an excellent foundation from which she can build a happy, fulfilling life for herself. I can't let her go now, not when she needs me more than anyone ever has. I not only made a promise to Charlie that I would always be there to make sure her daughter would never know the fear of not belonging, or not knowing for certain that she is safe and loved, I made a promise to myself as well. You see, Your Honor, since I met her, Sammy has made a difference in me, too. My time with her has given me a new purpose in my life, like I have finally found the reason why I was spared from the fate I probably should have fallen victim to. As scary as it is sometimes to understand what it really means to accept the responsibility of taking care of such a precious little girl, it means everything to me to know that she depends on me as well as her great grandparents now. _Everything!"_

Ty had unconsciously put his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and staring at nothing in particular on the floor. As he searched for the words needed to nail down his motive for such an unusual legal action, he straightened up again to search the rows of people seated in front of him, looking for the man who had always inspired him to leave the past behind and make the most of the days he had left.

His life mentor and treasured friend, Jack Bartlett, was paying attention and caught the glance, nodding unspoken encouragement for Ty to go on.

"I honestly don't know what I would do without having Sammy to look to me so much to take care of her…, as much as I know how at this point. The idea that we are just beginning our journey together has changed everything about what I expected out of my life. Now I get it, what I want, and Sammy, Clint, and Margie are a very big part of it."

Everyone's eyes shifted to the judge. A collective thought permeated the room so thoroughly that they could almost hear it. Had Ty's words been enough to sway her back to feeling more confident about his credibility as a single parent, that he was not still the rebellious product of a broken home as his records might indicate?

"Thank you, Ty. You may step down."

A nervous anticipation was evident between Ty's supporters as well as the deflated petitioner slumped into the chair adjacent to his attorney and bowed his head. The experienced professional leaned in to whisper something into his client's ear and Ty telegraphed a hint of apprehension after giving his legal counsel an understanding nod.

Amy's heart began to thump in her chest at realizing the stakes had just gone to about double what they had been. She agonized at the pause in the proceedings while the judge busied herself for a few torturous moments with jotting more notes in her own file, the one she had started at the top of a sizable stack on her desk. She then looked across the people sitting in her courtroom. "I think the time has come to address an unusual request by the deceased mother of the child. I have here a letter written and certified by her medical specialist as to the patient being of sound mind, on the date of Twenty-Three, December. In this letter, Charlene has a few things to say about her husband, Tyler Borden, and those statements have been taken into consideration. Also, Mrs. McCrary-Borden has requested that a decision not be handed down until the court considers the testimony of one, Amy Fleming. Is Ms. Fleming present?"

Amy handed her purse to Lou, holding the two pages of Charlie's letter in her left hand, and lifted the weight of the world upon her shoulders as she stood, "Yes, Your Honor."

"Are you ready to testify before the court in behalf of Charlene McCrary-Borden's request?"

"Yes, Your Honor, I am."

"Please, step to the bench and take the oath."

After swearing in with the clerk, Amy sat in the chair beside the judge and fidgeted nervously with her free hand at the cloth just above her knees, attempting to smooth the hem of the elegantly cheerful dress. She had commissioned it through one of her friend's wives in Paris as soon as she had decided to come home the first time and try to win Ty back. He probably didn't even remember it from the last time he saw it, the day she came to the clinic to try and get him to talk to her about forgiveness and making a commitment to revive their shattered relationship.

"I am going to do something a bit different, this time, Amy. I reserve the right to ask questions, either during your testimony or after you are finished. This situation is unprecedented in my court so let's just see how it goes, but I want you to speak freely, Amy. If Charlene had enough trust in you with such an important matter at stake, I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

Amy's eyes flicked from one face to the next in the room, every friend and family member a witness to bits and pieces of her long and stormy relationship with Ty. They were all intently focused on her, but no one there really knew how she felt about Ty now, not him, or even herself, if given the challenge of having to bare her feelings for everyone present to hear. "I guess I should begin by explaining why I am here in this chair today. I am sure all of you are surprised to learn that Charlie would put so much trust and faith in me to speak in her behalf now that she can't speak for herself, especially in such a sensitive time as this, considering everything we have all been through the past couple of years. I would like to read part of her letter first, the one she had given to Ty give to me not long before she passed away, in case I was not able to make it in time to speak with her in person. She begins, _"Amy, I wish we could have known each other longer. It would have made it easier for me to ask so much of you in my time of need. As you know, my little girl is soon going to have to face life without the love and guidance of a mother that loves her more than I have words to describe. I know that you once had to go through those same experiences, first as a little girl with your father, and then at fifteen when you lost your mother as well. Although the reason for your father's absence was different, a five-year-old only knows that someone they love and need is no longer going to be a part of their lives and it weighs the same as death to an innocent child. This is why I believe you are the one person I know, more than any other, who can relate to Sammy's situation and understand what it means to have the people she really trusts to take care of her. I want more than anything else for her to grow up happy and safe. That brings me to the next part, the one where I ask so much of you. You see, I am really scared that all those official reports in what must be a big stack of files from Ty's past will make any court hesitant to hear his plea, our plea, for him to take full custody of Sammy seriously. I know, and I think you do as well, that Ty is ready and able to take care of my precious baby like she deserves, but without understanding the wonderful man he has become, I fear the record of his past will prevent them from looking closely enough to see him for who he really is. Ty shared with me once that there was only one living person in this world who knows all of his secrets, things he hadn't gotten around to telling even me yet."_

A slight cracking in Amy's voice exposed the depth to which Charlie's words had reached, _"Of course, it was you. In my eyes, it is clear that you are the only one who can make the court understand that he is more than a written report criticizing past examples of what a troubled youth had done to him. The court needs to understand how he has become an exception to every rule they use as a standard and has come to the place in his life where he is capable of being a wonderful parent and an excellent example from whom my little girl can draw upon to thrive and learn how to become a decent, loving, happy adult someday. I know with all my heart that this is true, and I trust that you do as well."_

Tears plopped on the pages as Amy swiped the back of her hand to clear her cheeks of the evidence Charlie's words had had on her, and Judge Standridge leaned over the bench to offer an entire box of tissues.

"Charlie wrote a lot more, but those things are even more personal to me and I would like to keep them private."

"It's OK, Amy, take your time."

The witness was relieved at the less formal tone from the judge and tried to clear her head for what she supposed would be some of the most important words she would ever have to speak, with so much riding on the outcome of her statement, "The first time I met Ty was the day he showed up at our ranch. I was barely fifteen and he was seventeen at the time. It was a mild winter day and a friend from school and I were taking advantage of the break in the weather to get out of the house and enjoy it with a short ride on our horses. We were just a bit up from our ranch, riding along the road that goes into town, when this strange kid neither of us knew in an old blue truck with a motorcycle tied in the back came driving along a bit too quickly, I thought. When he got beside us he pushed in the clutch and revved up the engine and beeped the horn at the same time. Of course, the horses started crow hopping and nearly threw us, and when I saw him laugh at us in the rear view mirror as he drove away I got so mad that I heeled my horse hard and took off after him. I had no idea where he was going but I was determined to catch him and give him a piece of my mind, and as soon as he turned down our drive at Heartland, I knew I had him. The moment his boots hit the ground I came barreling up as fast as I could ride and at the last possible second I pulled up hard and we slid to a stop with my horse's muzzle planed right against his chest."

The vision was as clear as day and she couldn't help but let a grin slip across her lips as she glanced to the culprit in her story to see if he remembered, and it was clear that he did. "He tried to let on that he was offended at my apparent hostility as I finished telling him what I thought about him, but I think he knew even then that he had been a jerk and regretted doing it. I called him an idiot," straining in choking back a smile that wanted to fly in the face of the serious situation. "So, that was my first impression of Ty Borden, a city kid who was so far out of his element, whatever that was, that Grandpa, Lou, and I thought he would last no more than a few days before he gave up and left. Ty proved us wrong, though. It didn't take very long before we all realized how good of a worker he was, and other than going missing a few times that spring when he would sneak off to ride his motorcycle on the sunny days, he was quite reliable. My family soon began to think of him as one of us, and I know he felt the same way about all of us, too. I could go on for hours about all the things he did to prove is loyalty to us. You hear people refer to someone who would lay down their lives for some else, like a soldier's honor. Ty is that kind of person. He has proven it to us more than once. He has stood up for my family, and for me, on several occasions when anyone else would have chosen to stay out of the fight. We had a guy come to our ranch and steal my horse right out of the barn. I was still learning to drive with a trailer so Ty took me to every auction that opened for two weeks before we finally found Spartan. We discovered the guy who stole him was a very bad man, the same one that had tried to burn down our barn over a grudge and nearly killed my grandfather while he was at it. He had apparently worked a plea deal with the cops and was out of jail looking for revenge, I guess, and stole Spartan, the horse my mom had died helping me rescue. I would have done anything to get Spartan back and I had it in my mind how I was going to do it. Ty knew me quite well by then and it took him about two seconds to figure out what I was up to. He convinced me to let him help me, thinking he might be able to keep me from doing something stupid and getting myself in trouble, or worse. We ended up getting caught, but he made sure to push me out of the way so they didn't see me and took all the blame himself. I watched them haul him away in the back of the constable's truck knowing he had sacrificed himself to save me from having a record of trying to steal a horse, my horse, away from the man who stole him from me. I am sure you have read about the incident somewhere in that stack of paperwork you have there. A conviction would have meant that he would be put in a locked unit. It would have ruined all the progress he had made and would have been sure to make things that much harder for him after he served his time. Thanks to a contact we had in the system who knew the details of his case and knew us as well, he convinced the court to release Ty into my grandfather's supervision. The case was dropped, I ended up getting my horse back, and I learned a couple of lessons I will never forget, one of which was to never underestimate the kind of loyalty Ty Borden has for the people in his life."

Amy adjusted nervously in her seat, watching the shocking confession settle into the faces of her family. Although she had always suspected that her Grandfather had seen right through the official details of the escapade, this was the first time she had told a firsthand account of the incident to anyone. The clear visions flooding into her memory put her slightly more at ease, "Ty lived in that drafty loft of our barn for four years, a feat unto itself. He said it was _'heated in the summer and air conditioned in the winter'_ , an understatement of epic proportions. During that time, he learned a lot about working with all the animals around the ranch and when Scott Cardinal, our vet, saw how well Ty could handle them, he offered to let him tag along on some calls and eventually work part time in the vet clinic to see what he thought about considering life as a veterinarian. That led to Ty taking the initiative to apply for online courses to get his high school diploma, something he did while working full days on the ranch and filling in at the vet clinic in his spare time. He graduated with high marks, good enough to get him accepted into more than one vet school. He chose to take his classes at the University of Calgary and even though it meant he would have to quit working for us at the ranch, he would be able to keep his job at the clinic so he could pay his own way through school. You probably have a copy of his school records, so you know that he did very well even though he had to use a lot of his study time working at his job and driving back and forth between Hudson and Calgary."

Amy snapped out or her trip down memory lane, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to ramble, but there is so much to say about Ty that would make you see him like Charlie described him in the letter, the way everyone in this room who has known him for years sees him, the way _I_ see him, and not the way those files would leave you thinking about him, if that's all you had to go on."

"Go ahead, Amy," a much different Judge Standridge said, "I cleared the rest of the day when I saw all of these folks show up for this hearing because I knew we weren't in for an ordinary session today. Please, continue, it is important for you to say what you came here to say."

Amy settled back in her chair, looking for the final push to make her case, and found Ty's ever captivating green eyes riveted to her, inspiring the mysterious source of courage she needed to conclude sharing what was in her heart. "I should probably finish by saying that I have known Ty Borden for a very long time and have been very, very lucky to have him as my best friend since shortly after he came into my life, and so much more. He was sent to our ranch to learn from us, things like living with a real family and the give and take that's required to make it through most days without some kind of conflict, how to deal with everyday life, and how to believe in himself again. I think we, as a family, have learned just as much from him in seeing how compassionate and unyielding he is when it comes to committing to the people he cares about. He is one of the few people I have ever met that I would trust with every possession I have, and I would give anything and everything I have in return if he needed it, even if he wouldn't ask. He is the smartest, kindest, most decent person I know. He has a heart of gold and is the most loyal man anyone could ever hope to have as a friend. I can think of so many things he has done that I would love to tell you about, for my family, our friends, and for me, but there wouldn't ever be enough time to tell them all. Charlie was right to think Ty would be good for Sammy. If I had a daughter and was faced with the unimaginable reality of having to find a safe and secure way for her to grow up without me, if I couldn't be there to raise her myself, I would choose Ty as well, because…, because I would know without a doubt that she would be in the best possible care."

It was something they had become aware of early in their relationship, a feeling unexplainable to anyone who had never experienced it for themselves. Amy could see the surprised gratitude in his eyes, acknowledging that he understood she had given him everything she had, just like she had promised Charlie she would do.

It took a moment to break the contact they had made. It felt good to know that the gift of silent communication between them was still this strong.

The judge waited to be sure that she was finished, and then said, "The court wishes to thank you for your candor, Amy. You may step down now."

The judge, who had surely heard every sad situation there was to hear in juvenile custody cases, seemed moved by the display of two families coming together in support of the young man she had perhaps wrongly formed a preconception of, and felt that he stood a better than average chance of becoming a good father to the six-year-old girl, more than she could hope for in many of the hearings she presided over. It was one of those days when she felt like she had actually helped lay the foundation for building a strong family, and giving a heartbroken little girl a father who would show her love and encouragement was icing on the cake.

Amy's testimony had moved Melissa Standridge beyond the professional stage. Hearing what she assumed to be a normally reserved woman pour out her soul in defense of a man in front of a group of people like she did, including the man himself, was compelling evidence that there was more to Ty Borden than she had anticipated finding. She secretly wished she knew the rest of the story between them, not in pursuit of judgement alone, but because the hopeless romantic sensed there surely was an amazing one to be told.

Ty took the time to return a heartfelt thank you to everyone who had come to support him in court. In all, there were four more testimonies, including Jack, Lou, Clint, and Scott, any one of them helpful in turning the tide in their friend's favor.

Everyone except for Amy. Somehow, she had quietly slipped out of the courtroom and was conspicuously missing from the group. ' _I have to find her,_ ' he thought, and left the courtroom humbled, happy, and confused.

The time had come for Ty Borden to turn another page in his story. It was time to head toward to the only real home he had ever known and hug his daughter for the first time, and then, enjoy the rest of his first day as a father.

 _To be continued_


	56. Chapter 56

CHAPTER 56

Some things never change. Although nothing about Ty's life had turned out like he imagined it not all that long ago, the path of the winding dirt road into Heartland Ranch remained true in running over the same tracks that had been there since the most modern means of transportation was in a buckboard tied to the back of a horse. He looked down the drive to the farm nestled in the valley of the Albertan foothills and hoped it would be there for at least a hundred and fifty years more. Slowing at the bend halfway down, the former resident ranch hand took his time gazing through the windshield of the big 8S dually. A brilliant blue sky dappled with puffy white clouds hanging over the Rockies belied any normal expectations of a midwinters day in southern Alberta this time of year. He supposed it was just one more example of how Charlene McCrary must be influencing their weather from her new vantage point beyond the mountains, making sure the sun shone brightly on the day her daughter was to get her new dad.

As he pulled up to the old rail fence in front of the house, Sammy was the first to pop through the well-used screen door with Katie right on her heels, both running at full steam across the porch and clearing the three steps down into the yard like they were not even there. Before he could get the door closed on his truck, the two of them were standing expectantly under the pole entrance at the yard gate.

"You're really my Dad now?" Sammy gushed.

"Yup! I'm afraid so!" he smiled and bent down to catch the exuberant child as she ran into his outstretched arms.

Lou propped a shoulder against the door's weathered framework and soaked up their embrace, _'Who'da thought, Ty Borden, a dad! I'm so glad they found each other. Charlie would be so pleased right now!'_

"Hey, _Dad_! These two have been watching out the window for an hour. I thought they were gonna bust wide open from not being able to wait any longer," laughing in pure joy, honored to share in the moment a new father and daughter came together for the first time. "What took you so long?"

"I had some papers to sign at the courthouse and ended up having a long talk with Judge Standridge before I left. She turned out to be a really cool lady. Aannnd, I had a couple of places in town I needed to make a stop at before I came out here to pick up Sammy."

Katie skipped back toward her mother who was so full of the moment that she bent down and picked up her own little girl and gave her a kiss smothered hug as well, "C'mon inside, you two. This one's getting so big I can't hardly hold on to her anymore."

The wonderful aroma of a fresh batch of Sammy's favorite oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies infiltrated Ty's nostrils as he stepped through the door and into the kitchen, "Wow, Ladies, looks like I got here just in the nick of time to get in on a hot batch of those before you guys snatched them all up!"

"I would have saved one for you!" Sammy looked completely put off that he would think she wouldn't.

Ty sat in one of the chairs at the breakfast bar and said, "I know you would, Sam. You are always taking care of me," and smiled down at the inspiration which had made him want to be a father, scruffing a gentle hand across the hair on top of her head. She was the fullness of a strange new love, and yet she scared the bejesus out of him at the same time. She was the living reminder of a promise he had made to Judge Standridge, to Charlie, to his new daughter, and to himself, a commitment to be a parent like none he never knew.

"Can we go to the barn and see the horses before Sammy has to go?" Katie asked her mother.

"Whaddaya say, Dad? You sticking around for a few minutes so we can catch up?"

"Sure, go ahead girls, but first, I have something for you two."

"You got us presents?" Katie yelped.

"I did! First, Katie, this one's for you," and reached into his pocket to retrieve a small box and handed it to the excited little girl.

"Look, Mom! It's a charm for my bracelet!"

"Awesome! Let's see it!" wiggling her fingers to get her daughter to put it into her eager hand.

"It's…, two cowgirls on horseback! How sweet. What's the occasion?"

"This is to remind Katie how good of a friend she has been to Sammy and to help her remember that her other 'twin' will always be there when she needs a friend."

Lou got out of her chair and put her arms out, "Sorry, Katie, Mommy gets the first hug!" and kissed her "little brother" on the cheek with Katie hopping up and down awaiting her turn to show her appreciation as well.

"And, this is for you," reaching once more into his pocket and kneeling on one knee in front of his new daughter.

"What did you get me?" she gasped, almost breathless with surprise.

"Give me your hand," he asked her, and when she timidly presented the tiny hand to him, he took the new box and opened the lid.

Sammy's eyes lit up with youthful anticipation, and then narrowed, "It's empty! What does _this_ mean?" frowning as she plucked a tag from where her gift should have been.

Lou covered her mouth, confused and wondering what he could be up to.

Ty laughed at first, and then felt terrible about teasing her, "I'm sorry, Sweetie. IOU means that I owe you for something that is not in the box right now. I _really do_ have something very special for you but I want to give it to you when it's just me and you. I think you will like a lot, but I didn't want to give Katie her present here and have you think I forgot about yours, so I need to ask you to wait a bit longer before you see what I got you. I just wanted you to know that it will be worth the wait, if you trust me. So, do you forgive me?"

"Of course, I do, Dad," a tear trickling down her cheek as she spoke.

Ty scooped Sammy up in his arms and kissed away the streak on her cheek, "I shouldn't have teased you. I guess I have a couple of things to learn about being a dad, but I'll do my best to make it up to you, OK?"

Sammy threw her arms around her dad's neck and kissed him back twice on the cheek, "It's OK, I'll show you everything you need to know."

Lou was already in tears, but she nearly choked at trying to hold back her laughter from the sincere little girl's innocent assurance, trying not to spoil the first few precious moments in the new father daughter relationship she was watching unfold before her very eyes.

"You'd better hurry and get out to the barn, girls," Lou reminded them. "I'll bet Sammy is anxious to go and see what her dad got for her."

The new pairing of parents smiled to themselves as the pint-sized cowgirls wasted no time in pushing through the front door and clearing the steps into down to the yard like every other time they were together and heading out to the barn.

Lou mused for a few seconds and asked, "Can you remember what it was like, to be so full of life and being amazed with everything in it to the point that you can't even take the time to actually use the steps?" she chuckled back into a warm reminiscence and a sip of coffee from her cup.

"No, I can't say that I do," he answered without taking his eyes off the pure childish wonder rushing out toward the barn and another adventure to be discovered.

Lou knew him well and realized he needed a boost, "That was really something, hearing all those things about you in court today."

"Yeah, I think our emotions got the better of us at times."

"Oh, Ty, stop kidding yourself! You were amazing!" The sisterly figure reached out and encircled one of his hands with hers. "I watched Judge Standridge very closely. To be honest, I was really worried in the beginning. I think she had her mind made up that she wasn't going to be convinced to trust you before you took the stand and held your ground. I was so angry with her at first, but I can see now what she tried to do. She was testing you, to see if you could handle getting upset without bursting out in anger. I was _so_ proud of you. All of us were."

"Thanks, but…, I think the one who made the most difference was Amy. The things she said…., Lou…., where did that come from?"

"Well, I don't see any reason I shouldn't tell you this. She was freaking out in her room this morning. She was in such a tizzy that I had to go in there and fuss at her to get her to come out when it was time to leave for court because if she kept it up, we were going to be late. After we had talked for a while, I figured out what was bothering her. It was Charlie's letter and her asking Amy to use her own words to convince the court that they shouldn't rely only on the documents they would have from when you were still in juvy. Charlie knew they would have a lot of evidence that would hamper a favorable decision allowing you to be able to win custody of Sammy. Amy still hadn't decided what she could say that would help you. In fact, she was terrified that it could be her own testimony that ruined your case, so obviously, she was stressing out about what she should, or shouldn't say. As it turns out, it's a good thing Charlie asked, for everybody's sake."

"So, what made her decide? Where did those words come from?"

Lou reached out with her hand and patted lightly on his chest, "I told her to stop thinking with her head and just describe you like she knows you best, straight from her heart."

"I was hoping she would be here…, so I could tell her how grateful I am for making me sound like the kind of person I wish I could be, but what could I ever say to repay the debt I owe her? After this thing is all said and done now, I believe she is the one who gave me Sammy. I wouldn't have had the chance to live up to my promise to Charlie without her standing up for me like she did, or to protect that little girl who just lost her only real parent."

"Oh, I think you have already told her everything you needed to say," Lou smiled with a confidence built from years of watching the two of them interact.

"Huh? I didn't have a chance…."

Lou interrupted, "I saw that look between you two while she was still on the stand. You know, I always admired that _thing_ you two have."

"What _thing_ are you talking about, Lou?"

"C'mon, Ty. The way you two can just look at each other and say _volumes_ without as much as a word, that is something I have only seen once or twice before in other couples. Grandpa and Grandma Lindy had that kind of look. I think Clint and Margie have it too. I would give _anything_ be loved like that."

"Do you think she really knows how grateful I am for what she did for me today?"

"You could see as well as me or anyone else who was in that room how much it took out of her to let loose of all those feelings she has been holding back all this time. I'm not sure I have ever seen her so vulnerable and honest. It took a lot of courage for her to say those things in front of all the people that mean the most to her, and all of us know she meant every word. I saw her getting what you were telling her with those eyes of yours when she finished. She knows."

"So, is she coming home soon? I really would like to talk to her, face to face. I texted earlier, but I haven't heard back."

Lou explained, "I found a note here on the table when we got home. She had apparently packed her suitcase ahead of time and when she left the courthouse early to beat us home, she threw it in the truck and left. She told me that she was going to be OK, but she felt like she needed to be alone for a while. She is on her way back to Edmonton as we speak to get some more work done on that consulting job she has with the Pittingers, so that is probably why she hasn't answered your text. Thankfully, she doesn't make a habit of messing around with her phone while she is driving. She has been especially careful now that she has that new truck. Wouldn't want to scratch it up because of getting distracted," she smiled, feeling a bit proud of her sister for finally getting a decent form of her own transportation. "I would guess she has a couple of weeks, maybe three left before we see her around here again."

"That's too bad. I really wanted to see her."

"I wouldn't worry about it too much, Ty. Being in court took a lot out of her and she still feels responsible for all the bad things that have happened around here lately, including your accident, so, let her have a little time to sort it all out. She is going to be fine, I promise."

"I hope so. I just wish there was something I could do…."

Lou returned a hand to his chest and patted him reassuringly before showing him the rest of the note, _'Tell Ty I am truly sorry for leaving like this, without saying goodbye, but I wasn't sure I could face him yet. Just tell him the most important thing right now is to take good care of his new daughter and everything will work out fine, he'll see, and that I will see them soon._ '

* * *

The drive back to 8S ranch was relatively quiet. Sammy usually had a knack for spurring on a conversation about anything and everything while being confined to a seatbelt inside a moving vehicle, but she seemed subdued for Ty's liking.

"You still mad at me for the IOU?"

"No, that's OK," dismissing the comment with a shrug of a shoulder.

Ty watched her face as she remembered the surprise, "Are we going to the place where I get my present?" she chirped.

"Yes. That's where we are headed. You forgot all about it, didn't you?"

Sammy laughed, "Sure did! But this time you're really going to give it to me, right?" still wondering if he was finished teasing her.

"This time, I will."

"Where are we going?"

"I thought we would take the buggy out to the overlook and have a celebration, just the two of us," he offered, taking a quick peek to see if she was going along with his proposal.

"Cool!"

Ty drove the big red truck through a gate beside the shed where Charlie's Polaris off road vehicle was stored, "Here we are! Why don't you go tell Gram that you made it home? I think she has something for us to take with us to the overlook."

Sammy opened the huge truck's door and bounded out of the seat, onto the chrome running board, and a third hop down to the hard gravel driveway, then streaked toward the winterized flower garden that surrounded her great grandmother's favorite window to look out of.

Ty watched her as she ran full speed toward the house thinking she had to be the spitting image of her mother at that age, wide open everywhere she went, and returned Margie's wave from the door which magically opened at precisely the right second to allow access to the fast-moving child as she cleared the steps and disappeared inside.

After sliding the shed door open, Ty thought he had better see if the battery was still charged enough to start the vehicle. He let out a sigh of relief when it fired up without a hitch. The thought occurred to him that Clint had always had a way of staying ahead of everyone and had probably checked it himself earlier in the day when he heard about the plan.

The buggy sat idling while Ty finished packing enough blankets to stay warm in the open vehicle. It wasn't cold yet, but it might be on the return trip. A quick check of his inside jacket pocket reassured him that he hadn't managed to lose Sammy's gift. _'All good!'_ he thought, and headed toward the house to retrieve Margie's picnic basket and the daughter that came with the deal.

"There you are!" Margie quipped. "Thought we might have to send out a posse to find you."

"Just getting everything ready. Thank you, Margie."

The busy woman stopped her never ending work at the kitchen sink and dropped the dish towel on the counter as she approached him, "You two have a nice time," and made no hurry out of giving the young man that had taken Charlene's child into his life a long hug. Backing away far enough to see him, Margie looked up into the face of the man who had finally won her notoriously independent granddaughter's heart and nodded. "Go on, now, while you still have good light. The chill will set in before you know it."

Ty didn't let her go before he bent down and kissed the grandmother he never had on the cheek. "We'll be back before dark."

* * *

It took just short of fifteen minutes to get to the overlook where Charlie's bench waited in the clearing at the edge of a high ridge above the magnificent valley that eventually joined up with the Eastern Slope of the Rockies.

"I'll get the basket. Can you bring your blanket? The breeze coming out of the mountains will make you glad you did."

Sammy waddled up to the bench, barely managing the bulk of the bundle, and worked diligently to smooth out the blanket for them to sit on while they finally got to eat their late lunch. She stood still again, thinking. This was the first time she had ever been here without her mother.

Ty watched her crawl into her place on the bench and pull the cover across her lap. He joined her and set the basket at his feet so he could investigate its contents. "Let's see, this one is yours, ham and cheese, lettuce, pickle, just the right amount of mayo, perfect, I would say."

"Thank you."

"And this one…, is all mine!"

They must have been hungry. The sandwiches were gone in no time and they sat together for a while without conversation, just taking in the view. He had managed to make her smile, a little, but he knew what she was thinking because he had experienced the same feeling when he brought Amy here the day of the memorial service.

"It is so beautiful up here. It was your mother's favorite place in the whole world."

Sammy remembered the hours they spent here very well. She was hoping she would never forget those times with the one person she loved most of all, "I know. She was always happy here, even if she was having a bad day. She said she used to have a lot more bad days before she met you. That's what she told me."

"I could say the same thing, Sammy. You two have made me a lot happier than I was before I met you, too. I'm glad we get to still be together."

"Me, too."

They took a few more minutes to remember the woman who had brought them together before Ty decided the time had come to give Sammy her surprise. "You haven't said anything about that gift. What's up with that?" he said, poking the smaller companion with a nudge of an elbow.

"I guess I forgot. I was thinking of other things."

"I know what you mean. Me too."

He reached into his coat pocket and found the gift, then he slid off the bench and kneeled in front of his new charge, "Your mother and I got this for you to help you always remember this day," and opened another box, the one with her gift inside.

Being a bit skeptical this time, she waited until she saw the sparkle of a beautiful diamond flash out of the box as he rotated his wrist to make sure she would notice it. Her mouth dropped open as she realized it was her mother's wedding ring.

"Your mother wanted you to keep this for her. There is something written inside that she had done just for you."

"What does it say, I can't see the words," she asked, frustrated because of the tears pooling in her eyes.

"It says ' _Never too far, Never too high,_ " just like her stone right over there," pointing toward the small monument.

Sammy knew the story behind the words. Her mother had done one of her last videos to set up this moment by including the stone and explaining where the words came from, although she didn't get the entire meaning up until now. "She wrote this, because of me?"

"Yes, she said those words to me for the first time sitting right where you are now, just after she found out how sick she was. She was thinking about how to make sure you always had a way of remembering that she loved you more than anything in this world and hoped that you would use this as a place to come when you needed to be close to her."

"It's too big! I won't be able to wear it until I grow up!"

"That's why I got this to go along with the ring," he told her, pulling out a gold necklace that was substantial enough to withstand the rough and tumble activities of a six-year-old cowgirl, attaching the ring and pulling it around her neck. "You can wear it on special dress up occasions and keep it in the new safe in your room to see it whenever you want. I'll show you how to work it when we get home."

The child withered from the inundation of emotions bigger than her, too much for a young girl to accept all at once. Ty knew it was time to show her that he was there to make sure she would never be alone and gathered her up to let her sob into his chest.

The brand new dad held on to his daughter, tightly snuggled under two quilts on that bench, until the sun just began to touch the tops of the mountains. "Let me call your Gram and let her know that we are going to sit here and watch the sunset, just the two of us," then he followed up. "You know, so she won't come out here on foot looking for us," and heard the first sign of a smile from the girl tucked under his arm.

' _Please, Charlie, help me get this right,'_ he thought _,_ ' _With you watching over us, maybe I won't be so bad at this after all_ ,"

 _To be continued_


	57. Chapter 57

CHAPTER 57

Amy opened the bathroom door and lumbered into the hallway on her way to the kitchen. She found the usual box of cereal and rattled a bowl on the countertop to pour out her breakfast, then looked inside the refrigerator to grab some milk.

"Good morning to you too!"

"Oh, good morning, Grandpa," she mumbled back. "Where is everybody?"

Lucky you," he snorted. "It's just the two of us! Lisa had to go to Fairfield to check on a client who is supposed to be comin' to look at one of her yearlings and Lou took the girls to school 'cause she couldn't seem to get them kicked in gear this morning to catch the school bus. I'm surprised the ruckus didn't wake you."

"I didn't sleep well, again."

Jack had watched his youngest granddaughter plod around the house for the better part of a week now, if he saw her at all, and his patience was wearing thin. "Anything we needin' to talk about?"

She picked up the bowl and munched on a spoonful of flakes, taking her time to chew and swallow, "Why? What is there to say?"

"There must be sumpthin' worth sayin' if it's botherin' you bad enough to mope around here like you've been doin' lately. You haven't been yourself since last week."

"I haven't been feeling well," she answered honestly.

The no nonsense patriarch of the Bartlett family ranch waited to see if she might offer to elaborate as to her mood, but when she didn't, "Damn it, Amy, you gotta get out from under whatever it is you're carryin' around or it's gonna end up crushin' you."

Amy was notoriously akin to her grandfather in traits pertaining to people skills and she had to double hitch her temper and take a deep breath to keep from starting an argument she knew she would not win. "I'm sorry, Grandpa, I don't really know the reason. I just can't seem to get myself together lately."

"Wouldn't have anything to do with not answering Ty's calls or returning his texts, would it?"

"Why? Has he said something to you?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah, he has. I stopped by the clinic yesterday afternoon after I finished up my errands to check on him, to see how his first week as a parent went. What's goin' on, Amy? All the guy wants to do is say ' _thank you'_ for what you did for him and Sammy last week. That's all. He tried not to let on, but I think it bothered him a lot that you wouldn't pick up his calls."

Amy put her bowl and spoon in the sink and rinsed them off, taking a few more seconds to dry them with a dish towel before responding, "I know he means well, Grandpa, but, I just haven't been able to get up the courage to talk to him."

The old man knew when to be gentle with the most sensitive member of the clan, "What are you talkin' about, Amy? It's just Ty! You know, the fella you said so many nice things about in court the other day, things that probably made the difference in that judge goin' ahead and decidin' to let him keep Sammy. That was really sumpthin' special, sayin' it the way you did. You can hardly blame him for wanting to show a little gratitude."

"I know, you're right."

"Then what is the problem? Why won't you talk to the man you called the best friend you ever had?"

Tears welled up in her eyes as she finally looked directly in the face of the man who had always been her rock, "It's just that…, I've been thinking a lot about all the years I was so close to him and I couldn't say those things when it mattered. I loved him, Grandpa, the best I knew how, but I ruined everything over something so stupid as chasing some damn dream like a starry-eyed kid. I hurt him so badly. I hurt _everybody_. As much as I wish none of it had ever happened, what I did will never go away, and no matter how much I wish he could forgive me, I know he can't."

"Did you ever consider just givin' the guy a chance? We aren't talkin' about any ordinary man here, Amy. Ty is as reasonable and forgiving as anybody I know, and if my opinion still means anything to you, I am pretty sure he hasn't forgotten how he used to feel about you."

"And that's exactly why he can never forgive me! He remembers! And he always will!"

Jack patted his distraught granddaughter on the back of her hand, "Just think about it and maybe you'll see things a little clearer in a day or two. Then, maybe, give him a call?"

He stood and watched her as she bowed her head, giving a firm pat on the shoulder as he passed, and went to the mud room beside the front door to put on his boots and begin the daily chores of a lifelong rancher.

* * *

Five and a half days had passed since Amy's day in court and the sting of her words still haunted her. She couldn't explain the way she felt. She should have been happy. In fact, it did her heart good to know that she had a part in making sure a beautiful six-year-old girl would not have to give up any more than she already had when she lost her mother and became an orphan for a few terrifying days. Sammy was too small to remember her first birthday, the day her father was killed in a highway accident on his way home from the rodeo circuit to attend a party in her honor, but her mother was the kind of mom people envied because of the relationship she shared with her daughter.

If it had not been for her respect for Charlie as a special example of single parent and her willingness to honor the diligent mother's last request to pour out her soul in front of everyone important to her in that courtroom, Sammy might have lost everything that day.

As much as a mid-twenties woman could relate to the heartache the child must be feeling in the wake of her tremendous loss, she had at least known what it was like to have two parents up until the middle of her fifth year. She had never had to face being and orphan as Sammy had, but the pain that had been dredged up was just as real all these years later.

* * *

After turning out all the horses and allowing them to roam the winter pastures on a warmer than usual day, the welcomed silence of an empty barn had lured Amy into her mother's old office to browse through the pages of the dog-eared journal she had used to keep notes from all her client horses' sessions. It was the best way the conspicuously reminiscent young woman had to be close her mother, reading the notes written in her own hand and in her own words. The renowned horsewoman's daughter missed her terribly, especially on days like this, and could hear her voice as she read them. It brought her a little bit of comfort to know she might be watching down on her while she was here in her special place.

The distant rumble of a truck grew nearer from the ridge above the ranch and Amy rose from the frayed swivel chair to investigate. ' _Had she forgotten an appointment?'_ she asked herself. It was a surprise to see the 8S ranch truck stop in the driveway. _'What is Ty doing here in the middle of a work day?'_

It was not unusual to see Sammy jump out of the passenger door and take off running toward the house. Like Ty said, she was the spitting image of her mother in always being wide open and hell bent for leather, an old timey phrase he had picked up from her grandfather, but it became apparent that all was not well as she noticed Ty hop to the ground without stepping on the running board and take off running after her.

Amy made sure the journal was put away in it's safe place and headed out of the barn and on toward the house. When she came through the front door, Sammy's shrieking pierced the air and she sped up her pace to see what had gone awry.

"Sammy! Please, calm down!" Ty asked as he tried to settle the hysterical child.

"It's not fair! I want my mom!" Sammy squealed again.

Lou stepped in to try to capture the agitated child in her arms, "It's OK honey. It's gonna be OK."

"No, it's not! It's _never_ going to be OK!"

With that, Sammy suddenly turned and bolted past Amy and burst through the door, running as fast as she could go toward the barn.

"What's the matter with Sammy, Mommy," Katie asked, tearing up from seeing her best friend so upset.

Lou bent down to her daughter and explained, "Katie, someone said something mean to her at school today and hurt her feelings. We just need to let her calm down a little and then we can figure out how to make it better."

"Someone should go talk to her," the concerned girl said. "I don't like seeing her cry."

"I know, baby, but sometimes we just have to figure out how to fix things when they go wrong. Why don't you go in your room and play until we can talk to her, and then maybe you can help make her feel better later."

"How? I don't know how to make her feel better if she is that upset. I'm just a kid!"

Lou bit her lip in marvel of the innocence still in her daughter and picked the worried girl up to give her a hug. "I'll be right back," she said over her shoulder as she carried Katie down the hall toward her room. "Let me get Kitty-Kat busy in her room and then I will go out to the barn and see what I can do."

The older sister disappeared through Katie's door and left Amy alone with Ty for the first time since the hearing. "What on earth has happened?" she asked.

"Some mean kid at school must have somehow found out that Sammy's mom died and called her an orphan today. Man, things were going pretty well until I got a call from her principal today saying she was freaking out. That, and she bloodied the kids nose."

"Good for her!" Amy replied.

"Amy! I can't have her smacking some kid every time one of them does something mean to her! Does any of this ring a bell for you?"

"You mean with Georgie?" she asked, "Or do you mean with you?" under a raised eyebrow, a reminder of how quickly he used to regress into using his fists instead of his head when someone challenged him.

"Yeah, you would remember that, wouldn't you," having to admit to shortcomings of his own in his earlier days at Heartland Ranch, "and all the hell everyone went through trying to get us over flying off the handle every time some kid pissed us off."

"Ty, she's still hurting and missing her mom. Yes, she is going to have to learn to control her emotions, someday, but I'm glad she straightened that other kid out."

"Why would you say that, Amy? You want to see her getting off track from getting into fights every day?"

"Of course not! But I can tell you one thing for sure, the next kid will think twice before they smart off something stupid like that again!"

Ty was shocked to see Amy acting so angry and it took a few seconds before it clicked in his head, "I'm guessing you have a memory or two about something like this, don't you?"

Her face reddened from a mixture of stress, anger, and bad memories, "Very much so."

"I'm sorry, Amy. I guess I'm in the middle of my first parent panic attack. I tried to calm her down and I thought I had it done a couple of times, but just as soon as I would relax a little she would fly off the handle again. That's why I called Lou, to ask what the hell I ought to try next. But in the end, all I've done is manage to upset everybody here. I'm sorry. I am so far over my head…."

"We will all be fine, Ty," empathy for the new adoptive dad beginning to flow through her. "Would you be OK with letting me go out to the barn to talk to her? I would like to try."

"I don't know, Amy. She has said some very hateful things, the kind of things that hit you right in the gut, so…."

"I can handle it. Please?"

The desperate dad leaned back against the kitchen counter, "Ok, go ahead, but if it doesn't work out I will be right outside, so all you have to do is call out if it gets too rough."

The strong-minded helper was through the door before he had a chance to change his mind. Ty knew that Amy had her own stake in this and might just know what to say to Sammy and make a difference. Those two had already demonstrated a connection between them and he had witnessed the world class horse trainer tame terrified thoroughbreds more than once. Maybe she had another miracle left in her.

* * *

Ty paced the floor between the front door and the circle he repeatedly made beside the fireplace in the living room. The thought that he had been such a miserable failure as a parent was a hard pill to swallow. He had actually fooled himself into believing he could do this, to maintain control and be a cool dad, but the cold hard facts had humbled him into submission and he had been forced to come running to his friends begging for help like the rookie that he was.

They were all watching him. He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck, Lou, Katie, Jack, and Lisa who had rushed home to offer support after her husband had called in the Calvary to defend the home front. They all must pity the way he underestimated his ability to take over where a good mother left off.

"Ty, why don't you sit and rest," Lisa suggested. "You look so tired and I am sure Amy is doing fine, or else she would have come back for help by now."

"I suppose you're right, Lisa, but I promised I would back her up if things got rough. It's my problem, so I have to learn how to fix things like this when they happen. It's been ten minutes and I should go out there."

Lou approached him and went to her tip toes to kiss him on the cheek. "She is a six-year-old girl who was hurt by another kid's mean remark. There will be things crop up every day that challenge any parent. If it isn't one of a million things something like this, it will be skinned knees, busted lips, hissy fits over toys…, and then there's the scary stuff like the flu. There's nothing quite like seeing your baby puke her guts out and burning up with a fever to remind you what being a parent is all about."

Ty moaned as the color went out of his cheeks, frowning at noticing Jack smirking as he tapped the rim of his coffee cup. "You can't mean it gets worse?"

Lou seemed oddly amused, "You're in the big leagues now, Dad, so suck it up, Buttercup! This is only the beginning."

Lisa joined the two parents and said, "Go ahead, Ty. Just go easy and see if Amy has made any progress before you interrupt them. I am betting she will surprise you."

"Amy Fleming has been surprising me for ten years, so I would be a fool to think she wouldn't be able to get through to Sammy, too," he conceded, then sucked it up and headed out the door. "She is the miracle girl, after all."

* * *

The barn seemed eerily quiet. Ty had expected to hear Sammy still crying and Amy pleading for her to stop, but there was no hint of anyone in the dark aisle between the stables. _'They must be in the office,'_ he thought, and slipped as quietly as he could to take a peek through the narrow door. Nothing. _'Where the hell did they go?'_

Backing away from the opening and searching for another idea of where to look, Ty heard a hint of music coming from somewhere close by but soft and hard to locate. He listened, then peered up the stairs to his old living quarters in the loft and decided to creep up the wooden steps to take a closer look.

He had to be careful because the seventh, or was it the eighth step gave a telltale creak to announce unsuspecting intruders, a handy country style alarm system as it worked out, and he smiled as he managed to avoid it as he advanced higher toward the singing.

The door was slightly cracked and the lights dim inside the loft. He listened as Amy sang a cappella, a soft, sweet lullaby he had never heard before.

 _The moon is rising, the days at an end_

 _Now you're another day old_

 _Your eyes are growin' heavy and your dreams slip in_

 _Of the ponies runnin' fast on the prairies of gold_

 _Of the ponies runnin' fast on the prairies of gold_

Ty had heard Amy sing many times before and he already knew she had a beautiful voice, a natural inheritance from her Grandma Lindy who had recorded many 33 1/3 albums in her day. He may have heard the song before, but he couldn't quite place it. Maybe it was on one of her Wailin' Jennys CD's. Sounded about right, but there was a poignant depth to the words as she moved into the chorus for the child leaning quietly into her arms against her chest.

 _May the angels dance across your dreams_

 _Their laughter driftin' on the breeze_

 _Gathered 'round watching o'er you as you sleep_

 _And their whispers bring you love and peace_

 _Their whispers bring you love and peace_

He waited for her to continue with the next verse, but the room fell silent when she moved to see if the exhausted child had fallen asleep. Amy lay her cheek against Sammy's hair, frizzy and damp from sweat caused by incessant crying, and hummed the next verse more softly so as not to wake her.

Ty couldn't blink for fear of losing a second of the latest miracle the first love of his life had just performed. He watched as if he were being drawn into Sammy's dreams, floating among the clouds as she remembered the touch of a loving mother and the comfort it brought when something had upset her.

It shook him out of his trance when he heard Amy's voice crack and go quiet, followed by a restrained sniff from crying. He wanted to wait, it was her moment to keep, but as he heard her breathing become labored in trying to avoid awakening the child in her lap he could not stand to be so close and not come to her rescue.

He approached as carefully as he could, making enough of a shuffle that Amy would not be startled to realize he was there and he knelt in front of her so she could see him. Ty brushed the loose strands of hair from Sammy's face and bent down to kiss her forehead, thankful and elated to see her finally getting some rest.

He was close enough to see the frosty blue of Amy's eyes pooled with tears, apparently remembering her own mother's loving touch when she felt this way as a child, and he brushed her cheek with a gentle swipe of his thumb to clear the tears that fell more freely now.

The thankful father leaned closer and whispered, "Here, let me take her and I'll put her to bed."

"Ty, no, please, let me hold her for a while longer."

The request surprised him and his neck bent his head into a curious twist.

"Ty, I'm so lonely. Please, let me hold her."

With all that he had been up against in trying to survive on his own, he had never really considered how isolated Amy must have felt after her world caved in around her and so many of her relationships had suffered all at once.

Giving an easy nod to let her know it was OK, he stood and moved away a few steps and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

Amy watched his dimly illuminated face concentrate on the keypad as he thumbed the message and was confused as to why he would pick now as a time to be texting, but was relieved when the light went out and he put the phone back where it came from.

She felt him more than saw him, the room was growing dark, and Ty stood in between her back and his old iron bed as he shuffled his feet, scooting them on either side of her hips. The more he moved, the more confused she was by his actions, and Amy tensed as she felt him cover them with a quilt from the bed and sliding down her back, settling on the floor behind her. His hand brushed her shoulder to let her know he was ready and then slid just below her neck to the other side giving her a gentle pull to signal his intention.

"Who were you texting?" she asked.

As the unsure surrogate mother relaxed and allowed him to pull her into his chest, Amy's heart began to beat with the intensity of anticipation, the familiarity of his embrace like a dream that couldn't be happening.

She closed her eyes and let her head rest against the crook of his neck, adjusting the lie to fit her face against his cheek. His fingers traced a gentle sweeping of her upper arm in a lazy random pattern and the sensation spread like wildfire from the tingling in her hair to her toes.

"What was that song you were singing?"

"Just something I made up a while back to sing to Katie."

"You wrote that song?"

"Yes."

"I told Lou that you are still my Miracle Girl," he whispered, "and we would be a while before we came to the house. I only thought I knew how much of a Miracle Girl you really are, but as usual, I was wrong. Thank you, again, for saving me for the second time in a week."

Amy nuzzled her warm cheek against his neck, "I think that's just what we do..., save each other when we need it most."

* * *

The embrace lasted until Amy woke up two hours later, still in a dream that hadn't ended. "You're really here?"

"Where else would I be?" he answered, keeping the warmth flowing in his touch and the three of them huddled together in his old loft, content to let the dream carry them on.

 _To be continued_


	58. Chapter 58

CHAPTER 58

Amy stretched upward in the saddle as she sat astride Spartan and let him graze in the wild prairie grass after stopping to investigate a movement she had noticed on the far side of the unused meadow. She waited patiently to discover the cause of the mystery and kept the horse calm as she saw Ty drag a comparatively straight fallen limb out of the woods into the clearing. He could not see her from where she watched him, camouflaged several layers deep into a grove of trees on the opposite side of the meadow where he strained to drag the reclaimed eight-foot trophy across a few old hay bales and adjust it so it was secured about two feet high, in her estimation. _'What the heck is he up to?'_

She watched him for what must have been the better part of another half hour, she supposed, very much enjoying seeing him take off his shirt because of the hard work in making what appeared to be an improvised jumping arena, his toned body rippling as he lifted, dragged, and meticulously positioned the heavy poles onto the bales.

It was the first time since the 'bad boy' city kid had come to live at Heartland that she realized he was more than just another cute, self-centered boy with a chip on his shoulder. He was doing this because he wanted to please her, and it was working.

Everything that was wrong had been righted, and everything that was right seemed even more enchanting than before. She hadn't felt this full of life in a very long time.

A weird sensation shook Amy out of the riveting journey back to better days. She awoke from the dream during the middle of the night and when she looked at the clock on her night stand she wished it could have lasted until it was time to rise at her normal six a.m. alarm. ' _Three fifteen? Crap.'_

Her senses took a few seconds to assemble themselves enough to realize the lump restricting her freedom to roll on her side was the surprising bulk of a six-year-old girl doing her best to clear the area required for a three and a half foot, fifty-pound human to occupy territory she usually claimed for herself.

It was early, sunrise still four and a half hours away, and Lou was not due to stir until half past five. Having gotten an extra two hour nap the evening before in the old barn loft had altered her pattern and she knew it would be a futile effort to try and drift back into sleep again. That is when she noticed the sleeping girl beside her and was reminded of the fullness of joy she had experienced in sharing the time with Sammy in her arms and being warm and wrapped tightly in Ty's embrace. It felt so good to be able to comfort the girl when she needed it so badly and just as good to receive comfort from the one she still loved and needed like no other.

A swift stiff kick to the calf and a follow up annexation of another six inches into her space concluded the premature wake up call, _'OK, that's it! You want it that bad, you can have it!'_ and tossed the covers aside to slide her legs over the edge and find her slippers in the darkness with her feet.

Careful to avoid making any more noise than necessary, Amy slipped through the doorway into the hall and surveyed the dark so as not to stub a toe on indistinguishable objects. ' _It's so quiet you could hear a mouse fart,'_ she mused, then laughed to herself, _'Where the hell did that come from?'_ remembering one of the lighter arguments between her dad and mother after he had taught her the phrase at the tender age of four.

The oddest recollections were popping up from time to time, rising from some lost chasm in her damaged memories, but she relished getting any part of her life back that had been lost because of the trauma to her head, especially the little things which became like tiny breadcrumbs on a forgotten trail connecting who she is now to the little girl she would have been at the age of four.

After carefully navigating her way through the dimly lit kitchen, Amy opened a cabinet door and got out a drinking glass, poured some water from the sink faucet, and made her way to the sofa. She decided to sit a while in the darkness and think about the decision she had made. Setting the glass on the nightstand, she sank back toward the leather cushion and yipped at the firm push against one of her butt cheeks.

She rocketed upward and twirled around, and the obscure scrambling around in the dark had her heart pounding with fright until a relatively bright light flashed on and illuminated Ty's disheveled face.

"Ty!" She semi-whispered. "With everything else failing to kill me, you're trying to give me a heart attack?"

He was still too sleepy to answer, his own heart having to find its proper rhythm again, and coughed, "Geez, Amy what are you doing up at this hour?" and sat up squinting against the light to see her face.

"Well," she puffed, "it's a good thing I wasn't headed for the bathroom because I wouldn't be needing it anymore! What are you doing, grabbing my ass like that?" Trying to stifle a giggle."

"Hell, all I know is, one minute I'm sound asleep and the next, there's this giant ass like thing coming at me in my dream trying to smother me before I could get away from it."

"Hey! It's not _that_ big!"

"Uhhh, NO!" trying to keep his voice down while he wrestled into being awake, "I didn't mean…, Uhhh, actually, it was a _very nice_ ass…, like…, thing…"

A crooked smile stretched across her face, "You were dreaming about it?"

It hit them at the same time and broke out into a muffled cackling that kept ratcheting up from being sleep silly and laughing more at each other's laughing than anything else.

Amy took pleasure at how flustered he had gotten and said, "Scoot over, I need a place to hang out for a while."

"Did the kick monster get you?"

"Yeah, kicked right out of my own bed," Amy explained, "Literally."

"I'm sorry. She's a bed hog, that's for sure. Um," he wriggled to straighten up and slide to one side, "There ya go. Have a seat."

"I have a better idea," Amy's mind was beginning to function again, "How about we get a fire going so we can sit and talk for a while? I have put off talking to you long enough and I have some things I need to say, so if you wouldn't mind…,"

"Sure. Let me get the fireplace lit and I'll be right back."

The fire came to life as the two of them stretched their legs to rest on the coffee table and watched its glow begin to light up the room. They realized the proximity of all the sleeping family members would require them to converse at a whisper but after a few minutes of neither of them knowing where to start, Ty finally came right out and asked the question that he had been carrying around, "Why you have been avoiding me?" Did you really have to skip town last weekend to keep from having to talk to me? I would have given you space if that's what you need."

"I'm sorry, Ty. I just felt so…, I don't know…, _down_ , after being on the stand like that," she began, remembering the promises she had made to hold back nothing if he should ever ask her. "When I sat down in that chair I still didn't know how I was going to help you without screwing it all up, and as I was saying all those things I began to sink into a mood. It all caught me by surprise, the way it made me feel, and after I was finished with the testimony I just didn't have anything left in me to say, to _anyone_."

"Well, I have to thank you for the things you said, Amy. If not for you I would have let Charlie and Sammy down because I think it was apparent that the judge didn't believe I was the best solution to Sammy's problem. Who knows where Sammy would be right now if not for you?"

She glanced his way to see the fire playing across the green in his eyes and let her chin drop, "I felt like I owed you that much after everything that has happened between us. I knew I would never be able to erase the things I did to you and as I was speaking the words…, I couldn't stop thinking about how much of a fool I have been for not saying those things to you when it still mattered."

"What makes you think those words don't matter now? I know it was you that gave me the chance to take care of Sammy, to keep her out of the juvy system, Amy, and you gave me back some things I thought I had lost."

"What things?"

"Well, for one, you came through for me when I needed you to. I had almost forgotten what it was like when we never gave it a second thought about being there for each other. The things you said…, I don't even know how to tell you the way they made me feel."

"I only told the truth…, so help me God," holding up her right hand in honoring her pledge to the court, shrugging at the simplicity of her reasoning. "For once, I just let everything go and didn't hold back. I could have said more…, much more, but I was scared that I would blurt out something to make her change her mind for the worse, so I knew I had to be careful."

"You said plenty, and I owe you for it."

"I think I am the one who owes you."

"Why do you think that?"

Amy paused a few seconds and then started the recital, "For instance, you took your hard-earned money that you didn't have to spare and invested in a ring to represent our future together and I ruined the meaning of it for both of us, and like, now your truck is a mess because of me, but worst of all, and this is the part I can't get out of my head, you almost gave up because of the way I hurt you," she sniffled. "We came so close to losing you. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about the way things would be for so many people now if that had happened. We couldn't lose you…, _I_ couldn't lose you like that!"

Ty reached out and pulled her into his side, drawing her into the shoulder that had soaked up so many of her tears in the past.

"Why did you leave, I mean, after the hearing? I knew something had upset you and I only wanted to see that you were OK and thank you for what you did. When you left, I thought something you remembered had made you upset at me."

"It wasn't anything like that, Ty." She could see the hurt in his eyes and decided the time had come to keep her promise to herself and to Charlie, "I had gotten a call from Liz Pittinger, the woman who owns the stables I have been working on in Edmonton. She has been trying to persuade me to move up there to Edmonton and run her new operation after it is finished. After the hearing, I needed to be alone and think about whether I wanted to take her up on the offer and I needed to go see her face to face and give she and her dad an answer."

"Wow, Amy! That sounds like a great opportunity."

"I was so unsure of what I needed to do when I left here that day, but a few hours alone on the open road gives you a lot of time to think. I remembered the letter Charlie wrote to me, the part that I didn't share when I read it aloud in court and one of the things she and I talked about the last time I saw her."

"Oh? Can I ask what it was that she said, or is that too private?"

"You're telling me that you didn't peek inside the envelope and read it?"

"Why would I read your letter? That was between you and Charlie and I figured if either of you wanted me to know what was in it then you would have told me."

"I would have read it, if I were you," she confessed.

Ty had to snicker, "Yeah, well, you and secrets…."

Amy leaned in and nudged him, and then measured the face she knew was telling the truth, just like always, "Charlie told me the reason she believed we didn't make it as a couple was because we could never completely give ourselves to each other, that each of us kept enough of ourselves away from the other that it prevented us from being unbreakable. She said one of us was always running away from something and until we get it through our heads to stop running it will always be like that for us."

Ty mulled the idea around and immediately made the correlation, "Sound familiar?"

"Yes, it does. Who would have thought that a PHD in psychological behavior and a rodeo cowgirl would come to the same conclusion?" huffing at the irony. "I asked Charlie in her hospital room that night how she was able to get you to stop running away from her so quickly. She told me it was because she didn't give you the chance! She laughed at that, but it's true. She said she had been like us as well when she was younger, and after losing Sammy's father she almost gave up, just like you, but then realized it wasn't only about her anymore and that Sammy was worth the fight it would take to make a good life for them. The more I thought about what she told me while I was out there on that empty road driving farther away from home with every second that passed, the thought occurred to me, ' _That's what I'm doing right now! I'm running away from the very things that mean the most to me,'_ and I had to ask myself, ' _Why?'"_

"So, have you decided…, about the job?"

"Yes, before I made it up there to meet with them, I had made up my mind what I was going to say."

"What did you decide?"

"I told them I had a lot of personal issues that needed resolving here at home and that I was turning down their offer. I hated to disappoint them but I said I wasn't ready to give up on my life at home and that I wanted to rebuild my own business here at Heartland."

"Are you sure? It could be the job you always wanted."

"Maybe, but I know now that I need to find myself again before I can move on to another place. There are too many things left undone here and I intend to do my best to fix them so I can get my life back."

"That's a big decision, Amy. I hope you haven't let what happened with Ahmed cause you to lose the courage to let yourself try new things. I know things didn't work out the way you wanted in Europe, but I still think there is something out there that you are looking for and I would hate to see you have regrets over missing out on such a good opportunity."

Amy wanted to stay true to her new conviction to be honest with herself first, then to the ones she cared about the most, "I've thought a lot about the big dreams I used to have."

"Used to have?"

"Oh, I still have big dreams…, but they are real, not some story book fiction that I won't ever fit into. I'm not that girl, the one who waits for some hero to come and rescue her from a peasant's life. That's one of the things I have figured out, the fact that I have everything I ever wanted out of life right here, and if I can get all the pieces to fit back into place, _this_ is where I will find my ' _happy ever after.'_ "

"You're sure?" Ty sounded skeptical.

Amy pointed to the floor under the coffee table and asked, "Is that your medical bag?"

"Yeah?" questioning her reason for apparently changing the subject.

"Can I?" she asked as she reached for it.

"Sure, go ahead."

After unzipping the cover and reaching inside, Amy held up the dangling diaphragm attached to the stethoscope he always carried with him, "Is this the same one I gave you?"

"That's the one," he answered, shaking his head at almost forgetting the special gift. "You gave it to me the morning of my first day of classes at UC. It still goes everywhere I go. Thank you, again, for one of the best gifts I have ever received."

"Do you remember the first thing you ever listened to through these?" holding up the eartips to him.

"Well, let's see…, I remember you asking me to put them on and you talking into the diaphragm and asking me, ' _Can you hear this?'_ and my laughing at you over trying to clown around and make me less anxious over my first day at vet school."

"Do you remember what happened next?" feeling bolder, as if pushing a dare, and lifted the eartips toward him, "Here, put them on."

Anticipation made him smile, "OK," and he obliged her request.

After he adjusted the device in his ears, Ty raised his brow and pursed his lips, returning the dare, "Like this?"

Amy smiled the smile he missed the most, the one she rarely shared with anyone but him, her chin held low and looking up at him through the bluest eyes gleaming with a mischievous sparkle, "How about now?" and held the diaphragm against her breast.

He couldn't help but laugh at her, her face apparent in full well knowing his answer, "Loud and clear, except that it might be beating a tick on the fast side," he teased, not wanting to let her have the upper hand.

And then Amy surprised him by turning more serious, squaring her gaze directly into his eyes, "It's the same heart that was beating too fast the morning I gave it to you, and it's the one thing that hasn't changed since then. My heart has always beat a little faster when you are with me, and it always will."

Amy wilted from the effort of keeping her bottom lip from quivering, the admission opening her up to a vulnerability so dangerous that she had forgotten to breathe. Her head bowed from the lack of his response, a sign that his heart had hardened too much to be moved by her confession. It was too late.

Ty felt her crumbling into pieces and reached his hand to pull her toward his shoulder and gently stroked his fingers through her hair, "Amy, we aren't the same people we were back then…, and things have been moving way too fast for me to keep up with lately. It's not just me anymore. I come with a new responsibility that has to be included in everything I do, and in everything I am."

His gesture of kindness consumed her and she nuzzled into his newfound confidence, "I kinda like who you are now. I think having Sammy in your life has made you stronger than you were before and it is amazing to see you taking care of her like you do."

"Thanks, but it's a big responsibility, for me and anyone with me. Not much room for the fancier things in life, I'm afraid."

"Ty, my prince has never lived in a faraway land surrounded by white horses and coffers of gold, he is just this extraordinarily amazing guy that comes attached to the end of a stethoscope and hears my heart beating a little too fast to hide my true feelings for him."

Digging deep for the courage to face him, Amy drew just far enough away to capture his emerald gaze with her misty blue intensity, "I'm going to fight for you, Ty, and if there is any chance that you can forgive me someday, I will wait."

He watched her for what seemed like an eternity, but her gaze never left him and he knew she meant to be true to her word, "I am going to hold you to that," he said, and brought her upward with the gentle pull of a finger tucked under her chin and drew her lips onto his for the kiss neither of them wanted to end.

To be continued


	59. Chapter 59

CHAPTER 59

Leaving the finished stables at Riverside Meadows Ranch for the last time during her part of the building process had sent Amy's emotions riding high during the trip back home to Heartland. Experiencing a personal redemption of sorts in her part of the successful completion of the new state of the art facility had inspired her to start believing it was time to think about planning the revival of her own training business. Two years of being sidetracked and then completely derailed from the journey toward a secure and happy future doing things _her_ way was two years too long. There would be no more existing only to pacify every whim of the rich and overbearing breeders left to work with these days, although the Pittingers had been added to the short list of folks who had changed her mind about there being so few honorable people left in high performance horse dealing. The rebounding equestrian felt genuine hope again, an uplifting rush of accomplishment she had almost resigned to being a thing of the past.

Driving south down Highway 2 from Edmonton took Amy within sight of the distraction that had been catching her eye while passing back and forth through Airdrie. Stopping to see all the fancy new horse trailers in their lot each time she made the trek between the stable project at the Pittingers' ranch and Hudson was a temptation she had avoided long enough, and the generous bonus check in her pocket that Liz and her father had surprised her with for finishing up their stable project on time and reasonably close to the budget gave her the excuse she had been waiting for to stop and check out their inventory.

An hour spent walking up and down the rows of lavishly equipped equestrian transportation alternatives had opened her eyes as to the conveniences modern day cowboys and cowgirls demanded while they travelled these days, evoking visions of not having to wrestle open squeaky rusted doors and latches that were getting harder to manage in each passing year with her grandpa's trailer. The other thing that had been bothering her was the sense of clients telegraphing second thoughts when she came to pick their animals towing the faded relic that had been in the family for as long as she could remember. She was not only blown away by the countless options available, but also by the amount of cash it would take to own the one she really wanted. _'Grandpa would have another heart attack if I spent that much money on a trailer. I'll bet he hasn't spent that much on ranching equipment in his whole life!'_ she chuckled to herself.

She had sacrificed too much of her life to settle for anything second best, but the prices were staggering, none the less, and would require more thought about the first big investment she would have to make for the restructured business.

* * *

It had been almost five weeks to the day since Amy had seen Ty. She understood the new dad had been very busy trying to learn how to balance the heavier workload he had taken on at the clinic against trying to be a responsible parent to the six-year-old daughter he had fought so hard to keep. As a longtime friend, and especially with the insight she had gained as his once contented fiancée, Amy also recognized Ty's natural reaction to thinking he had to provide an extra income for all the things he would need for taking care of his new family.

The disconnection was not completely of his doing. She realized she had been scarce around her usual haunts in Hudson because of finishing up her commitment to the stable project almost four hours away in Edmonton. The long-distracted cowgirl slash horse trainer's attention was now aimed at resurrecting her business and getting a clientele of her own built back to its former standard, and then, with a little luck, perhaps beyond, and had resolved to give the father in training all the space he required to settle into his newest responsibilities.

Although he had finally begun to turn the corner in his life after a six-year commitment to maintain a heavy study schedule at vet school along with earning enough money to pay for his own education, Ty Borden could be stubborn to a fault. Amy knew all too well his engrained determination to be a better provider than his father was to him as well as his reluctance to accept help from others when he really needed it, regardless if they could afford the time and money that would have been a great help to him in leaner times.

Amy's hopeful trend had been enhanced in that Ty had willingly cooperated with keeping in touch during her absence. He had even taken the initiative to call her now and then, a big step forward, she believed, and hearing his and Sammy's voice helped to fill in the loneliness of being so far away from home. The distance between them was something she feared might let them slip away from each other after making so much progress and felt as though it was time to take the next step in assuring that a relationship with the ones she loved was not going to get away from her again.

Driving into Hudson, Amy snapped out of the deep thoughts that had been mulling around in her mind when the warning indicator flashed on the instrument panel that her Dodge was running on fumes. She pulled onto the convenience store on the edge of town to fill up her truck and after starting the pump, reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. "Hey, I'm just now getting back to town. Are you still at work?"

"Yeah, and it looks like I will be here for a while," Ty answered as though he was barely able to speak.

"You OK? You don't sound too good?"

"I'm just tired."

"Would it be OK if I came by?" she asked.

"Sure, just don't be surprised if I'm not much for conversation. I've been here thirty-three hours straight, as of right now, and I'm pretty beat."

"OK, I will see you in a bit. I'm at the station now, is there anything I can get you?"

"Maybe a case of energy drinks. That's the only way I will make it to pick up Sammy at her friend's house and make it home tonight."

* * *

It was ten minutes past five p.m. by the time Amy made it to the front door of the building she used to spend so much time visiting. The sign read ' _Hudson Veterinary Clinic,_ _Dr. Scott Cardinal, DVM,'_ and just below it _, 'Dr. Ty Borden, DVM.'_ She paused to read the sign on the door and brushed her fingertips across the letters of the name at the bottom. It was noticeably newer compared to the letters above them and it reminded her that a lot had changed since things were normal in her life, but there was a new energy stirring inside her and now was not the time to accept any less than the best she could do to get her life back.

Stepping into an empty lobby, Amy looked around to absorb all the memories this place held for her. Reading the note taped at the receptionist's desk, ' _Receptionist gone for the day. Ring the bell and someone will be up front to help you shortly,'_ Amy quietly pushed through the door to the clinic only to stop short of entering the examination room upon hearing an apparently defiant individual arguing against Ty's elevated voice delivering a rare lecture to one of his clients.

"Maaan, I'm tellin' you, Boomer is coming home with me, _now_! You are just wantin' to screw me over for another few days of kennel fees, that's all yer doin'!"

"No, Boomer is _not_ ready to go home this evening! What do I have to do to get it across to you that his recovery after a surgery like he just had today is going to require a lot of rest to give his stomach time to heal properly, and if I ever hear of you doing anything like this to him again, I will call in the ASPCA. Maybe you will take them more seriously than you do me!"

"Man, he's my dog and you can't do _shit_! I'll be taking him to a new vet from now on because I ain't listenin' to this shit anymore!"

Amy couldn't resist sneaking an eye around the corner of the lab door to see what was going on in the normally quiet room, and her jaw dropped at seeing Ty clutch a big handful the short, unkempt, hippie looking character's tee shirt and pull him up to his tiptoes while he drove his point home, "You do that if you think it's the right thing to do, but I am sending Boomer's file to all the vets in this entire area and if he shows up anywhere in these parts looking like his dumbass owner has hurt him again we will _all_ make sure you understand how uncool this is, _Maaan_."

Still defiant, even given his obvious disadvantage in size, "Fine! Whatever you say, Maaan, but I'm takin' my dog with me…, _now_! No way am I payin' three more days of kennel fees!"

Still dangling the little man from his grip, "Tell you what, Skippy, it's on me this time. I'll keep Boomer here until Monday and it won't cost you a dollar more, but before I let you have him, you're going to show up without being stoned out of your mind and promise me that you are going to stop feeding him beer and whatever pills you are giving him…, _got me_?"

"It was an _accident_ , Maaan, I swear! Boomer is my security system, and who is goin' to pay my expenses for having to come all the way back to town on Monday?"

Amy held her breath as Ty had almost let Skippy go, but instead gathered his collar back up in his fist again and said, "I can't fix stupid, but if you hurt that dog, or _any_ of the animals out there on that compound of yours again, I can fix you," he told the shriveling man in a low but evocative whisper. "You be here Monday at noon. You come sober, and I might let you take him. But if I so much as smell anything more than the usual pig shit on you, I'll make sure you can't have a _roach_ as a pet. Are we clear?"

"Fine, just lemme go, Maaan!"

Ty relaxed his grip and allowed the self-described 'man of the earth' to settle back on his own two feet, and as soon as the stringently informed client was sure he was loose, spun around and shot past the amazed observer without acknowledging her presence as he headed out the front door.

Ty's eyes followed the sooty streak as he made his hasty exit and caught a glimpse of Amy's confused face poking around the side of the door, "Hey, Amy! How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough! What-the-hell-was-that?"

"That was Skippy Rainwater, or so says his paperwork. He lives south of Longview on a so-called farm with a bunch of his 'enlightened' friends," he explained with air quotations from his animated fingers.

"I've heard about them," Amy admitted as she stepped inside the examination room and stood close enough to see that the vet was still coming down from a strong shot of adrenaline after his attempt to straighten out a kink in humanity. "Some rich kids from Edmonton bought three hundred acres or so with cash and turned it into some kind of compound, or commune, or something. 'Modern day hippies' is what I've heard them called, for what that's worth."

"Call them whatever you want. They've been out there a couple of years now and this isn't the first time I have had to fix up one of their animals over some stupid stunt they have pulled. I just know that if this or any other animal from that compound ever shows up at my clinic, or any other clinic around here after being mistreated like Boomer was, I will make it my personal mission to turn it an animal free zone."

"Yeah, I heard. No roaches for Skippy!" she chuckled, then turned toward the kennels. "Aww, what happened with Boomer, here," Amy asked as she opened the sad looking pup's cage and stroked his ear. "Hey, Buddy!"

"What happened was, they had one of their wild parties the night before last and a few of them thought it would be funny to start feeding Boomer beer, liquor, and probably a little weed. Apparently, Boomer got stoned and ate a few bottle caps, rocks, and anything else he could get hold of, which tore the hell out of his stomach. It took a day or so for any of those idiots to sober up enough to see what they had done to the dog and Skippy must have drawn the short straw and had to bring him in, crying and carrying on like you wouldn't believe, demanding that we do whatever it took to save him."

Amy frowned, "He sure seemed a lot different this afternoon."

"With that crowd, you never know what you are going to get on any given day. It's a shame, really."

"What do you mean?"

"Amy, any one of those people have access to anything they would ever want or need and living like they do is what they have chosen for themselves. They have no concept of reality or what life is really all about. All their parents are wealthy, from what I know about them. It's just…, crazy!"

"Maybe you just hit the nail on the head, Ty. Maybe having access to money isn't the only answer. Maybe their folks are so busy making money that they forgot to show their kids what it feels like to be accepted, to know what it's like to be loved, and as a result, they went looking somewhere else to find it."

"That's a scary thought," Ty said, suddenly looking upward as if asking a higher power for an answer to his predicament. "When you put it like that, I can see myself as doing the same thing to Sammy, and with the same results. She has been acting up a lot lately. I got called in by Sammy's teacher about another fight this week. She has been really upset with everything, and I mean _evvvverything_ , and I think it has a lot to do with the hours I have been putting in here at work."

"Ty, you mustn't let her feel neglected, not now," trying not to sound too preachy.

His shoulders slumped and he looked at her to admit that he agreed, "I know, I just don't have enough time to cover work and family life right now. By six o'clock this evening I will have been here thirty-four hours without much more than a bathroom break. I've had no time for sleep. It's been hard for all of us. In fact, I had to call her best friend's mom and ask if she could pick Sammy up after school this afternoon and watch her until I can get out of here and go get her. Clint and Margie are at a doctor's appointment in Calgary and wouldn't be home 'till right about now, Scott is on an emergency call up north of town, and Cass is on another emergency call out by Blackie, so I knew there was no way I was going to be able to leave here before six."

"It's nice that you have someone to help out when you need it."

"Well, I take care of their cat and puppy for free. It's the least I can do for all Stevie has done for me lately."

"Stevie?"

"Stephanie Lawrence. She is Sammy's best friend, Macy's mother."

"I don't believe I know her."

"No, I doubt you would. Her husband is a techie that moved them all the way out here from Montreal a couple of years ago, before he ran off with his secretary to Vancouver to take a better paying job and 'reinvent himself'. He makes a ton of money, so…, I guess those things were more important to him than his family."

Amy tried not to let her mind wonder, _'And someone who has undoubtedly realized what a catch the young Dr. Borden would be.'_ She thought for a few seconds, and then her eyes lit up, "Whaddaya say I go get Sammy for you and, if you like, I can keep her occupied until Scott or Cass comes to take over for you, then I can bring her with me when I come to get you and take you both home."

"Aren't you just now getting back from Edmonton?" he asked. "You are probably worn out from the trip and…,"

"Actually, I am feeling better than I have in a very long time. Today has been awesome, so far, and Ty, you can't keep this up. What use are you going to be to anyone if you don't get the rest you need? There is no way I am leaving here knowing how exhausted you are and letting you drive Sammy home in your condition. I would love to see Sammy. I haven't seen her for _so_ long," she proposed.

"That would be awesome, Amy. I owe you, again."

"Don't worry," she grinned while patting his chest, "I'll get it all out of you when the time comes. Got an address?"

Ty pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed around the keyboard, "I sent the information to your phone. I will call and let Stevie know that you are on your way."

Opening the text to double check that she had received the message, "Perfect!" Amy chirped like the schoolgirl he had known so many years before. "See you around six," and was through the door before he could thank her.

* * *

The neighborhood was fancier than Amy had anticipated. Houses lining streets woven between links of the only golf course anywhere in the area were well kept and showed off some of the upgrades that the ordinary middle class neighborhoods lacked. When she found the address Ty had given her, Stephanie Lawrence answered the door when Amy rung the bell. She was an attractive, mid-twenties brunette, petite in stature with big brown eyes and a winning smile.

"You must be Amy? Nice to meet you. Please, come in."

Amy shook her hand and entered the house which was impressively furnished and arranged. "Hi, Stevie. You have a lovely home," she said.

"Thank you, Amy. Ty has told me _so_ much about you, I feel like we should already know each other."

"Not all bad, I hope," trying to present a more confident status than she held, given the information her ex might have shared with his new friend.

"Girls! Sammy's ride is here!" Stevie shouted down the stairs to the lower level.

"It's nice of you to help Ty with Sammy like this," Amy offered. "Sounds like he has been overwhelmed with work lately."

"It's no trouble at all, really. Sammy is such a sweet girl. My heart just breaks when I think about her being without a mother. It's the least I can do."

"Well, maybe I can pitch in and help some from now on. I will have more time on my hands now."

"Oh? I thought you had taken a job up north somewhere setting up the new stables everyone has been talking about. Ty said he expected that you would end up taking those folks up on their offer to run the place since they let you build it just the way you wanted it."

"No, I have decided to come home and rebuild my own business. That's where I belong."

"How nice!" Stevie replied, less enthusiastically than before.

There it was, the tell-tale sign Amy had been looking for to back up her suspicion that Ty's new friend was interested in helping him out with more than babysitting, if she already hadn't.

"Amy!" Sammy bounded up the stairs as fast as she could under the weight of her back pack and dropped it on the floor to give her long lost friend a hug. "What are you doing here?"

Stevie was too taken off guard hide her surprise, "Well, I must say, that is about the biggest response I have ever seen out of her."

"Hi, Macy, nice to meet you," Amy said to the other girl standing in awe of the beautiful cowgirl in her living room.

"Hi," she responded, a little shy.

Turning her attention back to the eager guest of the home, "It's been a little too long since we have gotten to spend any time together, but we are gonna fix that right now, aren't we Sammy? Let's go get your poor dad and get the two of you home."

"You're taking them all the way out to 8S Ranch?" Stevie asked, trying to get a feel for where her competition was regarding getting back together with what she considered her new love prospect.

* * *

After saying their goodbyes, Amy made sure her passenger was securely strapped into her seat and got behind the wheel, "We have a few minutes before we need to get back to the clinic, so, what would you say to going over to Maggie's and getting one of their chocolate shakes?"

"Awesome! My dad doesn't hardly ever take me there to get one of those anymore," taking the opportunity to wring a little self-pity out of the situation.

Amy smiled, amused by her small friend's trying to play the sympathy card, "I guess we are going to have to see about that, aren't we?"

"Well, well, look who the trade winds just blew in," Lou sat her laptop bag on the counter and stepped around the side to give her missing sister a hug. "And look who she has with her?" trying to figure out how the unexpected pairing came to being together so soon after the traveler had arrived back in Hudson.

Amy knew the questions without being asked and said, "I will explain everything, just as soon as we both get one of your famous chocolate shakes, right, Sammy?"

"Yeah, a medium for me!"

"Ohhhh, going for broke while Dad isn't around?" Lou snickered.

"Yup!"

The older girls had a good laugh over the girl's sharp wit and Amy took her favorite seat at the counter, followed closely by her sidekick for the afternoon. "I stopped by the clinic as soon as I got back to town and…, stop it, Lou," she interrupted herself to address the presumptuous look on her sister's face. "He has been at the clinic nonstop for two days and I am going to take this one and her dad home so he doesn't have to drive in his condition. You should see him, Lou. He is worn to a frazzle."

"What's a frazzle?" the curious child asked.

Amy thought for a second, "Oh, let's say for instance, you never took care of your tack and it started looking all worn out…, that is what frazzled looks like."

"That's Dad, alright. He's about as frazzled as it gets."

Another giggle broke out from both sides of the counter and Lou added, "It's true. Ty has been working way too hard lately. I gave Scott a piece of my mind about that just the other day. I think he is leaning on Ty too much and I told him so."

"What did he say?" Amy asked.

"He knows he has been rough on Ty, but it has been rough on him and Cass too. One of the other clinics closed recently because the vet got hurt too bad to keep it going and they have had to take on more clients than they were ready to handle. They are looking for someone to help, but haven't found the right person for the job yet."

Amy vented, "All I can say is, they'd better get someone soon or else someone is going to end up getting hurt like that other vet."

Almost forgotten from the conversation, the concerned little girl asked, "Is Dad going to get hurt?"

"No, Sweetie," Lou spoke up in knowing how young ears pick up on everything said and interpret it as literal, "All we are saying is that we are going to have to find a way to help your Dad get more rest and have more time to spend with you!"

"That'd be good," she supposed, looking like she would believe it when she saw it.

* * *

The back door of the clinic was left unlocked, as usual, and Amy stopped Sammy before she went inside, "Let's be quiet and see if we can surprise him," she playfully suggested to the child.

Sammy seemed unsure, but when she saw how anxious the woman she trusted as a friend was to play the trick on her dad who had been so short with her since the last incident at school, she nodded and smiled at the proposition and whispered, "OK, let's sneak up on him."

Most of the interior lights were either turned off or dimmed for the night shift to start, but there was still no indication of Scott or Cass having returned from their field calls. The creeping duo approached the examination room from which they heard a squeaky cartoon like voice having a conversation with the vet. Amy crouched down beside Sammy and held a finger across her own lips to indicate the need for silence, and then she peered around the door's opening for the second time that day to see a sight that promised to make the secrecy worthwhile.

The squeaky voice said, _"I want to go home with you because I heard you have a little girl who lives at your house who LOVES animals."_

Sammy's eyes opened wide with glee at realizing the puppy was talking about her and Amy had to reminded her small companion to keep quiet so they could see where the skit was going.

"What makes you think this little girl would want a scrawny little runt like you?" Ty mocked the tiny dog, a white, brown, and black spotted Beagle, a month old with his droopy, disproportionately sized ears bunched in a comical twist as he tried follow the strange human interaction.

Amy stifled a giggle as she noticed Sammy readying to defend the pretended insult toward the innocent pup.

 _"But, look at me! Did you ever see a cuter puppy than me, like, EVER!"_

"Well, no, I can't say that I have, little guy, but farm dogs have to earn their keep, just like all the rest of the animals do. What good would a Beagle be on a farm?"

"Yip, yip, yip," the little animal answered for himself which proved to be too much for the littlest spy to hold back her exploding fit of giggles.

"Hey! Who's there?" Ty overstated his surprise.

"Is he coming to live with us?" The eager girl bounced up and down at Ty's feet and held out her arms waiting to hold the clinic's smallest occupant.

"I would say…, that depends," he thoughtfully challenged the rebellious child.

"Depends on what? I will take care of him like I'm supposed to, you'll see!" seeking to take the offensive, a McCrary trait she had inherited honestly.

"Depends on your attitude, for one thing. You can't just decide you are mad at the world and stop taking care of your animals. They can't help it if you are having a bad day. They have to have someone to take care of them every day, no matter what their parent feels like."

"I will take care of him! I promise, no matter what! Can I take him home now?"

"He's still too little to go home with anybody just yet. We need to let him grow another week or two first, then we'll see how you are doing with the animals you already have. I don't want to see your Gram or Grampa out in the lot throwing hay for your donkeys or making sure Sassy is fed every day."

"I'll do better, I promise! Please?"

"Like I said, we'll see how you do, then we can ask Barney what he thinks about it."

"Barney? That's his name?"

"That's what he told me it was," slipping a wink at Amy as she bit her lip at the adorable tease he was putting up to the eager little girl.

Amy added to the exchange, "Well, Sammy, it sounds like you have some work to do when you get home, so we had better get a move on."

"Yeah, Cass is on her way. She should be here any minute, so let me wash off a little and we can get out of here, if I can make it to the truck."

"Sammy and I will get you to the truck if we have to drag you out of here ourselves, right Sammy?"

"I don't know, he's pretty big," she replied seriously, sizing up the daunting effort it would take to move him like had been suggested.

* * *

Arriving at the 8S Ranch, Amy and her passenger unbuckled their seatbelts and peered around their seats to look at the passed-out vet sprawled across the improvised bed in the back of Amy's truck.

"Boy, he's really out of it," the driver established the next hurdle to overcome.

"Yeah, when I get like that, somebody just picks me up and carries me to my room and puts me to bed," the younger observer offered.

"Well, alrighty then, I'll hold the door and you pick him up. We'll have him into bed in no time!" Amy said with a straight face, eagerly awaiting a response.

"Hey, I'm just a little kid! I can't pick him up by myself!" worried that she had been designated the one for the job.

"OK, OK, guess we will just have to wake him up and make him walk in under his own power."

"I don't know about that, Amy. He's been a real Mr. Crankypants lately."

"You let me worry about Mr. Crankypants," she assured her little helper. "I'll straighten him out about all that after he gets some rest," stepping out of the truck, "but for now, here goes," opening the rear door and gently shaking his shoulder.

"Hey! What the...," he caught himself just in the nick of time. "Sorry, I must have dosed off."

"C'mon Mr. Crankypants. Let's get you inside and see if we can get you to eat something more substantial than junk food before we get you to bed," Amy offered, smiling at reminiscing over days gone by and putting the exhausted vet student to bed when he had used every ounce of his energy trying to stay awake for a rare date in between studying while he was still in school.

* * *

Margie sat a plate of her fresh cherry cobbler à la Mode in front of Amy after she had finished an unbelievably well prepared roast, mashed potatoes, and an ear of corn on the cob for dinner. "Margie, oh, my, I don't know if I have room for anything else," she laughed as she held up her hands in surrender.

"Just do your best, Dear, but I think you will like it," Margie suggested, satisfied by the chance to show off her kitchen skills.

"You only knew we were coming an hour before we got here. How did you come up with a meal like that on such short notice?"

"Rancher's wives learn to be prepared, Amy. Couldn't say how many times Clint would show up at suppertime with a few guests and I wouldn't know a thing about it until they all came in the front door. I had to get him trained on that one."

"How did you manage that?" the enthused listener asked.

"I had finally had enough of a crew of soused up cowboys coming in on me like that so I finally got my point across when I fed 'em all dog food one night."

The dinner guest's mouth hinged open, almost afraid to ask, "You didn't!"

"Oh, yes I did! And wouldn't you know, they ate it all up, every last morsel of it!"

"But, how did you get away with it? No one noticed?"

The old woman had that twinkle in her eye that Ty had spoken to her about and reached out to grab her wrist as she gave up one of her guarded kitchen secrets, "All you gotta do, Sweetie, is give 'em a couple more beers while you're gettin' something together and put enough hot sauce on the plate to cover up whatever you can scrounge up on a minutes notice. Those hungry cowboys would'a eaten barbed wire and never thought twice about it," heaving up a belly laugh that pulled her listener into a matching cackle that went on until they had tears in their eyes.

"What the Sam Hill is going on in here?" Clint asked as he walked through the door and stood behind his wife.

"Oh, nothing," Margie told her husband of a lifetime of give and take. "I was just tellin' Amy, here, about feeding your drunken bronc riders my special recipe of "Milk Bone Tortillas."

"Jeez. Marg! You told her about that?"

"She sure did," Amy admitted, and then doubled over again at the look of horror on her host's face.

"Ain't missed a phone call with a fair warning since," Margie bragged, starting another round of cackling that even included the embarrassed victim of the said incident.

After regaining a bit of composure, "How's Ty doin'?"

"I made him take a shower before I fed him, but I'd bet he doesn't even remember what he ate. Poor boy was so tired, I wouldn't bet that he didn't even make it all the way to bed before he fell over from exhaustion."

"What are we going to do about all that, girls? He can't keep going like this. Working like that will get the better of a man. Ask me how I know!" Clint patted his chest, a reminder of the heart that finally had had enough of his nonstop work ethic.

"All finished," Sammy proclaimed as she came through the back door and kicked off her boots.

"That's my girl! What's gotten into you so suddenly? I haven't seen you this wound up for a while, now."

Margie explained, "I think it might have something to do with a puppy at the clinic that is looking for a home."

"A puppy? What kind of puppy?"

"He's a Beagle! His name is Barney and he's the _cutest_ little puppy you ever saw!"

"I suppose you are the one who is going to be taking care of all your own animals from now on?"

"Yes! I promise!" selling the idea for all she was worth.

"OK, young lady. We are going to hold you to that, because you promised," the old man tested her conviction.

"I will. And I promise to be nicer from now on, too."

"So, no more complaining about your dad working so many hours and showing out at school to get back at him?"

The child held her head down, "I'm sorry for being so mean. I don't mean to. I've just been…, mad, I guess."

"Sammy, he told me today that he is going to get some more help at the clinic just so he has more time to spend with you. He misses you too, you know."

"I know, and I really am sorry."

Amy drew her young friend into a hug and put her pouty face in her hand when she said, "That is something I am sure will make your dad very happy to hear, and I'll bet he is sorry too, for having to be at work so much. It should be about your bedtime, shouldn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she conceded, and then brightened up, "Would you read me a story before you go?"

Amy looked up to her great grandparents as if she needed some kind of approval, "If it's alright with your Gram and Grampa, I would love to read a story with you."

Margie squeezed Amy's wrist that she still had ahold of, "Go ahead, Amy. That would be so sweet of you to do that for her."

* * *

Clint helped himself to a half slice of the apple pie he knew was stashed in the back of the second shelf from the bottom of the refrigerator, another hiding place that wasn't, watching for his wife to reappear and scold him for his dietary indiscretion, but had the evidence disposed of before she came into the kitchen and said, "Ty's dead to the world. We need to let him sleep in tomorrow morning," she advised.

"I agree. Let him sleep it off until his body tells him it's time to get up. He's going to feel like crap tomorrow," Clint could feel the burning muscles and groggy head from the years of a compulsive need to get things done, at any hour of the day. "I haven't seen Amy come out of Sammy's room. Maybe you ought to check on them?"

With that, Margie padded her way up the hall and cracked open the door of Sammy's room. The sight of the two of them on the bed together made her eyes well up in tears, Sammy curled up against Amy who had fallen asleep with the girl under her arm. She pulled back and motioned for her husband to come and see for himself, and when he stepped up behind her to look over her shoulder all he could do was put his hands on her upper arms and squeeze them softly, the memories of their great granddaughter safe in the arms of their beloved Charlie, the one they knew the young girl had been so terribly missing.

"What are we going to do, Marg?"

The wise old woman went to the hall closet and pulled out a brightly patterned hand crocheted afghan blanket, slipped into the bedroom, and covered them both underneath it without waking either of them. "I will leave Amy a note in case she wakes up to assure her that I called Lou to tell her where she is and that she may not be home tonight, and that the room at the end of the hall is ready if the "kick monster" puts her in the floor."

 _To be continued_


	60. Chapter 60

CHAPTER 60

A brightening ray of morning sun filtered through the hand sewn pink and white ruffled drapes covering Sammy's bedroom window, and as it inched slowly across her face Amy was awakened from the short cat nap that had fortuitously prolonged into an all-night sleep over. She stretched to try and persuade the slight kink nagging at her neck to go away and it took a few seconds for her to realize the vagueness she experienced was because of not being in her own bed, which was where she had expected to be this morning. ' _I can't believe I just conked out like that. I don't even remember being attacked by the kick monster.'_

A tug from something buried within the tangle of covers hampered her movement when she tried to reach for the note propped against the lamp on the nightstand. _'Awww, thanks Margie,'_ she thought, _'That was so considerate of you to make sure Lou wouldn't panic about my not making it home last night. She would have been worried sick. You think of everything!'_

Looking over her shoulder to verify evidence of the miniature life form scarcely detectable only through a small gap in the covers, Amy managed to free herself from the twisted pile of fabric and scooted toward the edge of the bed as gently as she could. When she had finally gotten upright a smile vanquished the pre-caffeine frown that she had been exhibiting. Seeing Sammy's scrunched face planted against her pillow in the burrowed entanglement of what used to be laundry-fresh ironed sheets was comical enough to make her forget how it annoyed her to greet a new day outside the sanctuary of her own room at Heartland Ranch.

Sharing the unforeseen, yet natural experience with the rancher's kid that reminded her so much of herself at that age had moved her in a way that took her by surprise. A fulfilling optimism radiated through her as the awareness of what had taken place between the child and her began to sink in. It was a small step forward, finding a smidgen of comfort for the heartbroken and disrupted little girl when she so obviously needed it, but it was a step in the right direction, nonetheless. In some mysteriously instinctive way, she had recognized Sammy's aching for the irreplaceable attentiveness of a mother's love, something Amy could relate to so very well, and although she could not pretend to know exactly how to fulfill the child's need from an adult's perspective this time, there was an unmistakable bond forming between the little girl and her, and it felt good, being needed.

An amazing aroma energized Amy's senses from what she would soon discover to be Margie's special breakfast spread already waiting on the kitchen table. Cracking open the bedroom door to see who might already be up and around, the half-awake accidental guest could definitely feel her appetite kicking in and curiosity drew her into the room where the older woman was finishing up the ritual she practiced when guests had spent the night in her home. The assorted selections were fitting for any of the best hotels in Calgary but of special interest was the gurgling fresh brew percolating in the antique pot just like the one her grandfather still insisted made the only coffee worth drinking.

The bunkhouse trained culinary artist had been watching for any sign of movement from down the hallway, "Good morning, Amy. Cups are right over there, just above the pot," and gestured toward the aptly stocked rustic cabinet, "Help yourself."

" _Ohhhh_ , that coffee smells _so_ _good_! _Thank you!_ And, thanks for making sure Lou knew where I was last night. I would have never heard the end of it if had let her worry."

Margie turned to watch the sleepy guest peruse the selection of cups lining the shelves, smiling as she noticed Amy pick out the one emblazoned with "Living Plan B," and pour the steaming lifeblood to ranchers all the way to the brim. She picked up her own special cup touting '#1 Hash Slinger' and made sure the gleaming stainless commercial stove was wiped clean one last time before ushering her newest patron to sit at the three-sided breakfast nook situated beside a large picture window at the west wall of the kitchen. Amy paused to take in a breathtaking view of the magical morning glow of the Rockies and smiled at noticing a pair of signs hanging at either side of the padded benches. The one to her left bore the logo, " _Margie's Kitchen - Everything Prepared With Love- DAMMIT!_ " and the other alluded to addressing a presumed ill-fated review from one of her regulars, " _Today's Menu Choices: 1: Eat it 2: Starve."_

Amy looked at her hostess and giggled out loud, "Appreciation of your hard work from loved ones, I assume?"

Margie was ready with her usual aggrandizement and puffed a satirical retort, "As far as the story behind this sign, here," pointing to Amy's right, "I hadn't slept in a couple of days with Charlene's mother being colicky and all, and one night at supper Clint decided he didn't want Tuesday Tacos on Tuesday anymore. We hadn't been married much more than a year and a half and both of us were working very long hours every day back then. I did the bookkeeping for our new rodeo promotional business after I got caught up with all the normal chores, which was _never_ , and on top of all of that, I had a baby to take care of…, make that _two_ if you count the big baby I was married to," snorting at the overtone of not yet having her husband 'broken in' at that point of their relationship. "We stayed so bristled up at each other that it didn't take much to set either of us off 'because we were about one cross word away from wailin' away on each other's chins from the pressure of trying to keep the wolves away from our door."

It was easy to see that the wife, great grandmother, cook, accountant, and wearer of many other hats was enjoying an opportunity to share a tale from the McCrary family history with someone who evidently appreciated hearing it. Captivated by the seventy-five-year-old great grandmother's entertaining embellishment of a glimpse back into four generations of memories, Amy took another sip from her cup, leaned forward, and showed her concern, "You don' t mean that you actually came to blows?"

"No, it never quite came to that," a wry reminiscence of hindsight reinforcing her confidence. "Clint was smart enough to know when to shut up and I gambled that he would never strike a woman. Luckily, we were both right."

Well into the autumn of her years, the woman who spoke from hard earned experience took a moment to appreciate her immersed listener with a discerning look, a subtle nod to the setbacks she knew had sent Amy's promising young life into a jumble of devastating disappointments. "Anyway, I was completely exhausted the night of the "Big Taco Tuesday Meltdown" and you can probably guess from the sign what I told him. We got into the God-awfullest argument you ever saw about the alphabet and rhyming menus and the importance of a regular schedule. Didn't speak to each other for two whole days after that until we both figured out it was a lot more fun makin' up than it was to hold a grudge," leaning back against the seat, enjoying an honest belly laugh and winking at her enamored listener.

Conjecturing the young couple at the rocky beginning of what had turned out to be a long and rewarding journey, "You two loved each other, though, even through all the hard times. It's amazing how hindsight changes the way you remember the blood and guts kind of arguments after a few years have passed," Amy said, reminiscing about a few meltdowns of her own. "The harshness of our words has so little meaning after we've had time to think about why we were really angry and what we wish we would have said instead."

"That couldn't be any truer, Amy, but back then it was all we could do to keep from choking each other when we got started in one of those disagreements. It didn't take long for the rift to come off as completely silly to both of us. He never said another word about the incident but he wasn't going to let it pass without making sure I knew he hadn't forgotten about it," she reminisced a reflective grin as she took a moment envisioning her remorseful husband and the way she chose to reciprocate his roundabout apology, "and this sign was one of the gifts Clint got me for my birthday which happened to be the following weekend. Tell ya a little secret…," wiggling forward in her seat to accentuate the delivery, "after I got through with him that evening, it wasn't the only thing he'll never forget."

Amy's forehead stretched upward, picturing the two rowdy lovebirds ending their nasty argument in the best possible way, "Oh? You made sure of that, did you?"

"You want to ask him if he remembers when he comes in?"

Amy groaned, her hands held over her open mouth to cover an embarrassed laugh, "Uhhh, _nooo_. I think I will take your word for it."

The fun-loving Septuagenarian still had a flair for mischief and the younger admirer wished she could be more like Margie would have been when she was still in her mid-twenties. Amy let her mind's eye see the older couple in much younger bodies, being a fly on the wall while watching the fireworks, "I'll bet you two were something else when you first got together," feeling comfortable enough to provoke her friend's knack for storytelling.

Coming back to the conversation after a slow sip from her mug, "Sweetheart, you have no idea," obviously cherishing more than a few examples of her friend's suspicions.

"And that one, I'll bet there's a story behind it as well?" The inquisitive listener gestured above Margie's shoulder.

"Well, let's see," the memories still keen, just needing the slightest provocation to get them going, "This one was a makeup gift from Charlene when she was still in high school. She got it for me to restore the peace around here after a big disagreement we'd had."

Amy leaned over the mug grasped in both of her hands and asked, "Oh? I pictured you and Charlie getting along very well," loving getting to know more about the personal side of the older woman who had so motivated her curiosity. "I have to admit to admiring the relationship you two shared. I really miss having that…, having my mom and grandmother around to talk to, even if it would have meant an occasional argument between us."

"No, no, we had our moments, Charlene and me. This little sign came about after she had just turned sixteen," a grandmotherly love welled up in her eyes as she looked up to retrieve the incident still vivid in her memory. "She'd mellowed a lot by the time you met her, but that ain't the way it was when she was in her middle teens. You can imagine what she was like at that age, wide open every second and nobody new beans from bear scat if she didn't agree with them about something. Never had a minute to spare for me or Clint back then when it came to her friends and things going on at school. One evening she threw a prize winning hissy fit because she had someplace to be, or _thought_ she did, anyway, and didn't have time to sit down and eat with supper with us before she left the house. I set in on trying to explain that it wasn't just a meal, it was about sitting down and having a conversation about the day we all had and catch up with each other every now and then."

"I take it that she didn't appreciate the lesson?"

"Oh, God, no!" Margie reiterated, raising her hands, shaking them to dramatize the illusion. " _So and so is going to be here any minute to pick me up!_ _Nobody cares about what they eat!"_ she said, _"It's just something you have to do to keep from dying!"_

Amy consoled her friend a few too many years late for having any practical effect on the situation, "I guess we have all been unappreciative at times to the ones who are only trying to look out for us while we are growing up. I think all of us have regrets for what we said and did when we were so disrespectful to the people who loved us and only wanted what they knew was best for us. So, what happened next?"

"She stormed out the door, of course, angry as she could be. Figured for sure that she would lock herself up in her room for days on end like she was known to do, but that night she came home earlier than we expected, even before her curfew which was at ten thirty. I could tell she was feeling bad about the whole thing but neither of us had anything to say just yet. She just told us _"I'm sorry, Gram, Gramps,"_ that's what she always called us, " _Goodnight,"_ and went to her room. It took a couple of days before we could talk normally again, but the next weekend she asked to ride along into town with her grandpa while he tended to his errands. When they got home she came in here where she always knew she could find me and handed me a package beautifully done up with lace and a big pink bow. ' _Just because I love you so much,'_ she said, and when I unwrapped it she broke down and cried like a baby, said she was sorry, and would never be so rude to me again."

"Do you think Clint had a little talk with her on their way to town about her behavior?"

"He claimed they didn't talk about it, but those two were tighter than two coats of paint and I have a good idea I never heard the whole story," scoffing at their known conspiring ways.

Margie couldn't help but notice the smile that hadn't left Amy's face since she came into the kitchen and the glimmer in her eyes from being drawn in to the stories. "You're lookin' pretty chipper this morning. How did you get along in the hazardous sleep zone last night?" chuckling to herself, flavored by the seasoning of her own experiences of falling asleep within range of the restless child's sudden movements. "I am surprised to see that you were able to tough it out in there."

"I don't remember waking up once, and better yet, I don't feel a single bruise on either of my shins, so I came out of it in pretty good shape except for this stiff neck."

"Well, it makes me happy to see you up and at 'em with a smile on your face so bright and early, and it's a pleasure to have another woman in the house to talk to for a change." Margie got up from the bench and opened a cabinet, reached inside, and returned with a plastic bottle in her hand. "Here, take a couple of these," handing the Ibuprofen to her guest, "I've been missing having someone to talk with me about…, well, anything that don't have to do with livestock, trucks, motorcycles, the homework I have a hard time doing better than our baby girl does, or the latest Disney movie."

"I'll bet you do!" Amy laughed at the older woman and the way she always kept things moving, no matter the time of day. "You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble, Margie. I am so sorry for spending the night uninvited like this."

"It's no trouble at all. I am glad you are here. Now, get yourself some breakfast."

"Thank you, but I would like to freshen up a bit first, since the others aren't up yet. I must look like a hobo right now. I have my suitcase in the truck but there are a couple of things I am out of. I didn't stop to get them because I planned on being at home this morning."

Understanding of how a woman needs to look her best, especially when there is a risk of being in the company of a handsome young man, "Sure, Amy, you can wait to use Samantha's bathroom, of course, but I just now saw a light in the hallway so she must have gotten out of bed. There are still some of Charlene's things in Ty's bathroom that you could use, if you like. I checked this morning to see if they were still there."

The thought of invading sacred territory gave her pause, "Oh, Margie, I don't know abou….,"

The practical minded woman interrupted and flicked her hands toward the other end of the house, "Amy, her things are there, not being used, and she wouldn't mind at all for you to use them. Someone else, _maybe_ , but not you."

"Do you really think so?"

"Charlene liked you. I know, it sounds crazy considering her husband was once engaged to you and all, but she really did like you. She thought long and hard about the reasons things happened the way they did and when it all came down to it, after she actually met you, she trusted you." Margie sat beside the hesitant woman to explain, "Charlene had a way of getting to know people and making friends out of them so easily, but there weren't that many people she came to trust the way I know she trusted you. That's why I was so surprised, but pleased, mind you, that she put so much faith in you as quick as she did to help us out when we needed it during those awful times when I actually thought we might lose Samantha to a family of strangers. So, go ahead, don't feel like you would be intruding anywhere around _this_ house because you are certainly welcome anytime, Amy, and whatever you need, just speak up and I'll see what I can do about getting if for you."

It was a peculiar concept to think about, but Amy accepted her reasoning and said, "Thank you, for saying that."

"Go on, now," Margie shooed her guest, "Get your face washed and your hair brushed before the others get up and you'll feel much better. I'll check on the kid and see if she is ready for what the weatherman promises to be a wonderful day, and then we can all eat together while we get our morning organized."

* * *

Toting the overnight bag which carried the daily essentials of female survival, lacking a couple, Amy looked down the hallway and asked, "No Sammy yet?"

"No, I just checked on her and she is taking her sweet time this morning. She remembered you are here and wants to make a good impression because she has a favor to ask."

"Favor? From _me_?"

"Yes, because she says you are the only one in the whole wide world who she thinks might be able to help her with Petey, her pet miniature donkey."

"Well, that would be a new one. I have never worked with a donkey before, big _or_ small."

"Don't worry too much. The kid has been so distracted lately that she hasn't fussed with him as much as she used to and he is making sure she knows how unhappy he is about it."

"I'd love to help her, Margie. I really do enjoy spending time with her. She isn't like most other kids I know. She's almost a grown up already, the way she thinks about things."

The great grandmother beamed, "Yes, she is a special little girl, alright."

"Has Clint finished with breakfast already?"

"He has an appointment in Hudson at nine o'clock and he needed to make the morning rounds earlier than he usually does them so he could be there on time."

"It's good that he still has something he likes to do to keep him busy. My grandpa is the same way. He needs to have something to do or he goes stir crazy and everybody within earshot gets to hear the complaining," amusing herself remembering the trait that all old ranchers seemed to carry.

"Yes, I'm OK with it as long as he doesn't try to over-do it with heavy lifting or something that is just too stressful for an old codger like him to be doing. I'll tell you, Amy, having Ty around has been wonderful for Clint, and for me, too. He does a better job at getting that hard-headed old fool to listen to reason than I can. Sometimes, I swear he just tries to aggravate me to my wits end for the sake of doing it."

"C'mon, Margie, I see the way he still looks at you, especially when you don't notice. I wish I had somebody that loved me like your husband _obviously_ still loves you."

The older woman tossed the dish towel she had been using to wipe the kitchen countertop across the edge of the sink and sat next to her guest, "So, how are things going between you and the vet? I was pleased to hear a while back that maybe you two were starting to talk more, like the friends that you used to be."

"I want that so much, Margie. To have his trust and friendship like it used to be, I want that as much as anything, but I want to do it the right way and let things work themselves out without feeling forced or artificial."

"Yeah, I get that, but it might not be a bad time to turn it up a notch, if you get my drift," Margie suggested as she looked over the top of her glasses, a hint of friendly advice hovering like the steam from her fresh topped coffee mug.

"Stevie?" Amy pinched her lips and nodded at getting the point of the comment.

"Stevie," Margie acknowledged the perceptiveness of her friend. "I ain't sayin' there is anything wrong with the girl, but she was out here bringing Sammy home one day last week and I could see the designs in her eyes from the minute she got here. Ty is the kind of man that will get a girl's attention, you know, and hers has been got."

"I kinda figured that out when I picked Sammy up at Stevie's house yesterday afternoon. She was very nice until I said something about bringing Ty home so he wouldn't have to drive while being so exhausted. I could tell it bothered her, like I was stepping into her territory, or something."

Having fought most of the battles that crop up with matters of the heart, the more experienced woman replied, "I don't doubt it, but I wouldn't worry too much about her causing trouble just yet."

"Why would you think that?" Amy questioned her lack of concern. "I thought she looked like she might be a good catch for a guy as long as he would be OK with Macy. She's pretty, keeps a good house, and apparently does well enough to maintain a comfortable life for herself and her daughter."

"Yeah, as long as the ex's monthly installment for his screw up keeps coming in I suppose she will be alright, but who knows how long that will last? She ain't done a lick of work outside of that house since she's been here so if the checks stop for any reason, things will change in a hurry. She's a smart girl and she's figured out Ty would be a good provider, and in case you hadn't noticed, not half bad to look at…," a trademark sly grin creeping across her face seeking to provoke a response.

Amy tried her best to ignore the assessment, other than her amused smile caused by the crafty old woman's endeavor to stir the pot, but her willpower perished at the last minute, "So…, what's your opinion of how Ty feels about all of this? Do you believe he has started to think about seeing Stevie as more than just a friend?"

"Let's just say that keeping a fire hosed down will keep it from getting too hot. That poor boy hasn't had the time to take care of himself or Sammy either, let alone adding someone else to the mix. He has been worrying me with all the hours he has been putting in at that clinic of his. Clint agrees with me that something needs be done, so that is what the meeting in Hudson is about this morning. It's time to get all of Charlene's financials set up the way they need to be for moving on with what's ahead. There are details to be worked out with the recycling business, for one thing. We have talked it out with the employees and we all agree that finishing the new property we bought last year for the business and selling the whole operation to the university in BC will be the best thing to do for everybody. The new owners have guaranteed the boys' jobs will be secure in the transition and that's what Charlene would have wanted, if Ty didn't want to do it instead of the clinic, which he doesn't."

"Margie, I'm glad that you have a good plan for Charlie's business, but I'm not sure Clint, or Ty for that matter, would care for my knowing so much of your family's personal business…," Amy spoke up, hesitant to intrude into the private affairs of a family she was not a part of.

"It's OK, Amy, I've been around long enough to know an old soul when I meet one and I don't have any concerns about you respecting our privacy with family matters."

It seemed to the outsider that her developing friendship to the McCrary clan belied the time that she had known them. Amy rarely felt at ease out of her element at Heartland anymore, but this house and this family felt like an older pair of her favorite boots, the ones she always reached for when all she wanted was to be comfortable. (C)

Another light illuminated the darkened hallway and when the expected tromping of little feet did not materialize, Margie took another sip out of her steaming cup and tried to remain casual with the update, "There is also the matter with what to do about making sure Sammy and Ty are taken care of. Charlene had a fund set up to see that Sammy's education is already handled so Ty shouldn't ever have to worry about all of that. The red truck he has been driving is titled in the company's name so it will be included in the sale of the company's assets, but Clint plans on taking Ty to look at new trucks this week to pick one out that he thinks will best suit his needs for the foreseeable future. That way, he doesn't have to worry about replacing that old wrecked truck of his for daily transportation and I will feel a _lot_ better about keeping our baby girl safer inside a newer vehicle while they are traipsing all around the countryside. Then, once we get all that taken care of, maybe we can convince him that he can back off from all those hours he is working and enjoy his life for a change."

"But, Margie, you know Ty well enough by now to know how hard headed he is about trying to get by on his own. He has a really hard time accepting help from anyone. Trust me, I have worked long and hard to understand that about him. There were a couple of times I thought I had finally gotten through to him that I only wanted to help because I cared to much, but in the end, he couldn't accept putting himself in a place where he felt obliged to anyone else, even from someone he was supposed to have shared the rest of his life with."

Ty's ex fiancée looked down at her nervous finger dallying with the rim of the mug she held and saw the steadier hands from her confidant surround them to offer an encouraging squeeze, avoiding eye contact until Margie spoke up, "We will see about that, Amy. I have always approached life like I couldn't give up on whatever I thought was best for us. Lord knows where my family would be now if I had not kept fighting to cherish every little bit of love that we shared while we had the chance. There is no replacing that, not one single minute of it."

Glancing once again at the suspicious inactivity from the other end of the hallway, the self-appointed peacemaker took a big chance, "Time's coming when you are going to have to decide for yourself once and for all what to do about fixing your relationship with him, Amy, as a friend or as something more. Do you know what you will say to him when the time comes to tell him everything you really want him to know?"

"I feel the same way as you do about having a family of my own, Margie, but it's not all up to me. Ty always felt as though I expected more than he could offer for us to have a good life together. It has always frustrated me that he thought about me that way, although it is probably fair given the way I treated him sometimes."

Amy stumbled, her uneasiness resurfacing due to her surroundings, "This is sort of awkward, Margie. I am sitting in his deceased wife's family home saying these things about the man I know without question that she loved…, but I also have a feeling you understand that I mean no disrespect for them and their marriage. In fact, I admire Charlie for having the courage to take the chance and find happiness the way she did. It wasn't her fault that I ruined my relationship with Ty and hurt him like I did…, and to be honest, it made me feel better knowing a nice family was taking such good care of him so he wouldn't have to be alone anymore."

"Your being pretty hard on yourself, don't you think?" Margie suggested. "You two were just kids trying to figure things out and when other people choose to interfere in a relationship between two lovers things can get out of hand very quickly when you aren't yet strong enough to hold on to each other."

"There are other things I haven't told him or anyone else yet," she confessed. "As if he doesn't already have a low enough opinion of me these days, I'm not sure what he would think of me if he knew."

"Everybody has regrets, Amy. You can take that from someone who knows. I am sure that you are underestimating the healing power of honesty between two people who obviously care so much about each other."

"Maybe so, but if I haven't been able to forgive myself, how can I expect him to?"

"If you want to tell him, it would be my advice to get it done as soon as possible. There's no progress in putting it off," rechecking to see that there was no perceptible activity from where she had seen the light. "I always found that if you face your problems head on, even if it gets a little rough in the beginning, it's easier to come to an understanding with someone and move on, one way or the other. At least there are no secrets to cloud good judgement for either of you. Now, what could possibly be so bad?"

Amy took a few seconds to decide if she should include her new friend into her shattered world with a few of the sordid details about the end of her relationship with Ahmed, the offers he had made, the unexplainable control he had over her, and her inability to think straight. "I knew something was wrong with me and the situation I had gotten into but I couldn't understand why I felt so helpless. Every time I made a decision to do something it was like there was an act of God to make it impossible for me to carry it out. I was confused and scared, and I knew I was in trouble. I wanted to leave but I had burned all my bridges at home and I felt like I was on my own. It almost cost me my life, and it would have if not for a friend I am very lucky to have had looking out for me."

"Oh, my, Amy! I had no idea things were so awful for you."

"Nobody else here knows why I came back home except for Grandpa and Lisa who got me the help I needed to recover from the operation, Dr. Bilson in Calgary, Lou of course, and now, you. Everyone else thinks I was off to Europe having the time of my life and the only reason I am back to Canada is because the prince got tired of having me as his latest conquest and found someone else to replace me. The truth is, it didn't take long to figure out that he had built himself a nice little harem of girlfriends scattered all around the world. I have found out since then that some of the women have never been seen again, including a couple of coworkers and friends of mine, so as bad as my experience was, some had it worse."

Her expressive reaction revealed that Margie was truly shocked, "Thank God you made it out of there alright!"

"I was very lucky. While I was recovering in France at Lisa's villa, she and Grandpa made sure I had very good rehabilitative care for my injuries, but it was more than that," Amy revealed, perceptibly shaken.

"I can imagine that you needed counseling to help get your faith in humanity back," Margie consoled her obviously broken friend.

"You don't understand, Margie. Yes, there were obvious physical barriers to overcome, but the doctor in France told me that I had been subjected to a long-term introduction of drugs into my system. They suspect, after talking with the police in Barcelona, that Ahmed had his doctor to make sure that my food and drinks were laced with his so-called prescriptions that altered my ability to think clearly. It would have only been a little bit at a time at first, but eventually is was enough to change me and alter my ability to make decisions for myself. The doctor told me the drugs given to me for the terrible headaches I was having actually helped with the pain but once I was addicted to them it was more about the fear of keeping the pain away that made me less resistant to questioning the other symptoms. Ahmed aimed to take control of me completely. His plan was to make me so dependent on him and his miracle doctor that I would be unwilling to try to leave because I had no one left besides him that could make the pain go away."

"But you did try to leave, didn't you?" the attentive friend reminded her.

"I wanted to come home and I told him so. I knew he was angry but I had no idea how far he would go to stop me. I should have died that day…, and I would have if not for Gabrielle San Nicolas. It took many months to get back to believing that I could go on, even if it meant rebuilding my life as a single woman who had ruined all her most important relationships and would have to find a way to make a go of it alone. I came back to Canada feeling humiliated, dirty…, like a stranger in my own house. I still feel like I will always be damaged goods and no one will ever look at me without seeing me as less than I used to be."

"Is that why you have been so hesitant to talk to Ty? Are you afraid that he will see you that way?"

"One of the best things about the way we used to be was that I could look into his eyes and, even if he wanted to keep something from me, they would tell me what he was really thinking. I can see the hurt in his eyes when he looks at me, Margie, the regrets and distrust. He tries to hide it but it's there. I know I earned it but it's like taking a knife right in the heart to see him look at me that way."

"There have been a lot of reasons for him to be wary of what tomorrow might bring, Amy, from things that have nothing to do with you. His life has been turned upside down so many times lately that I am sure he doesn't know which way is up. I know it's been hard for him to get his feet under him again but he's tougher than he thinks and he'll settle in to all the changes soon enough with the right kind of help, and I believe having you around more often is going to be good for him too."

"Really? You really think that my being here isn't causing more grief than it's helping?"

"Don't ever underestimate a good friendship, Amy. You mustn't forget that you and Ty had more than a love affair to fall back on, you had a solid and rewarding friendship first. If you keep reminding him of how good of a friend you are the rest will take care of itself."

"I should have been stronger, Margie. After everyone I had already lost while growing up you would think that I would have known how irreplaceable a love like we had is. I should have fought as hard as I could have to save us. I didn't tell him how I felt when things were good between us but I knew it was special, the way we could communicate without saying a word, the way he made me feel safe and loved. I never wanted to be a famous rodeo stars' wife or a princess lavished with meaningless gifts like he imagined. You can't buy a love like we had and most people will never be lucky enough to experience it. His love was worth more to me than any material possession ever could be. That's what makes it so hard…, knowing I've already been given the love of my lifetime and knowing I will never have that again with anyone else, that I was the one who destroyed it out of arrogance and fear."

"He's come a long way, you know. It's been a rough couple of years for him, with some good parts sprinkled in here and there. I believe he has come through it knowing what he wants out of life now. You just have to wait for him to let you in and be there for him when the time comes."

"If Ty can't forgive me and accept who we are together it wouldn't be fair to either of us to pretend it was any different than it really is. If I can't forgive myself…, how can I expect him to?"

Margie held Amy's hands for a while longer, allowing their emotions catch up with the conversation, and when she looked beyond her shoulder and noticed the light in the hallway reappear and go dark again reached for a spoon to start filling her guest's plate, "You look like a scrambled eggs kinda girl to me," and when Amy nodded in agreement, scooped a big helping from the pan and put it on her plate soon to be supplemented with two slices of 8S Ranch's home grown bacon and a fresh buttered slice of toast. "Dig in before it gets cold! It doesn't look like you are going to have to worry about anyone seeing you without makeup this morning."

 _To be continued_


	61. Chapter 61

CHAPTER 61

The smell of bacon sizzling in the skillet had Ty's stomach rumbling in protest of being ignored. He had slogged himself out of bed and opened the door into the hallway only to stop in his tracks while he sorted out his confusion. He could have sworn he heard Amy's voice engaged in pleasant conversation with his grandmother in law. Leaning hidden from view, a shoulder propped against the wall just short of being seen from the breakfast nook, he decided to listen to the women chatting at the breakfast table thinking he should be able to figure out why she had come back to the 8S ranch so early.

It wasn't his intention to spy on them but he found himself enjoying the back and forth of two women chatting about this and that, something he hadn't realized yet that he had been missing at the beginning of each day. He was about to leave them to their girl talk and return to his bedroom when he overheard Margie comment about Amy's 'toughing it out with the kick monster.' It suddenly hit him that she must have spent the night here at the ranch. When the conversation turned more personal he couldn't bring himself to interrupt the interaction between the two. They had apparently embraced a furthering of their friendship, something he knew they both needed, and was surprised by how frankly the conversation was going. The way they shared closely guarded details about their lives was as though they had known each other for many years and neither gave any indication of having any issues with the possibly misplacing a confidentiality.

Waiting until talk from the kitchen was overtaken by the clattering of silverware and plates while they prepared to have a hearty country style breakfast, Ty decided to make his entrance only after closing his door loud enough to alert everyone that he was on his way to join them.

"There's one of the sleepyheads!" Margie announced with a little extra boost in fanfare. "Amy and I were going to go ahead with breakfast and let you sleep in. Clint's out doing chores. Figured you'd get up when you felt like it."

"I wouldn't say for sure that I feel like it yet," he huffed, "but my stomach decided it was time to get up and see what smelled so good in here. Hey, Amy? What are you…?"

"Grab a plate and sit! You know the drill," Margie said as she offered her seat at the table across from their guest.

Ty knew the quick-witted woman's purpose and saw no need to object as he sat in the same chair Margie had been using, "I wasn't so sure my eyes weren't lying to me when I saw you sitting here. I guess it wasn't a dream that you brought me and Sammy home yesterday evening then?"

"No, your eyes are working just fine," Amy smiled as she raised her cup in greeting. "I was apparently more exhausted than I realized, too. One minute I was reading to Sammy and the next thing I knew, I woke up still in her bed this morning. I had hopes of getting myself together a little better before you had to see me like this."

"Amy," he chortled, "we've seen each other just about every way we can be seen," catching himself at revealing a bit too much in mixed company, "Ummm, anyway, you look great. By the way, thank you, again, for rescuing me when I didn't realize how far gone I was last night. I don't think I have ever been so tired in my life."

The rescuer wasted no time in leaning forward in her seat to convey her concern, "Ty, what are you doing? What are you trying to accomplish with working so many hours like this? It's not healthy and surely you can see how it has affected Sammy. You've gotta stop doing that!"

Her unbridled honesty caught her off guard considering she was a guest in someone else's home, but Amy did catch the satisfaction in Margie's expression as she pretended to toil away at her superfluous chore of hand drying a stack of dishes retrieved from the dishwasher. Amy sighed before offering the rest of her unreserved opinion, "I'm sorry for jumping on you like this first thing in the morning but I can't even bring myself to think what might have happened if you had tried to pick up Sammy and bring her home in such a state. You have _got_ to take care of yourself!"

"Help me to understand something…, do you mean…, take care of myself on the highway, or to take care of myself with something else, say…, Stevie, for instance?" he asked, a raised brow indicating he was not completely clueless to their concerns.

Amy gulped her coffee mid swallow, her cheeks exhibiting a beet red glow caused from more than the hot liquid at realizing Ty had apparently overheard at least a part of the supposedly private conversation between friends at the breakfast table, and when she glanced to her accomplice for support was understandably confused by the evident lack of atonement she witnessed. Having to carry the brunt of his indictment on her own shoulders, she stammered, "I…, uhhh, guess you must have heard part of what we were talking about?"

"Don't worry about it, Amy." Scooping up a spoonful of scrambled eggs and putting them beside the three crisp strips of bacon already on his plate, Ty relaxed in his chair and allowed a widening grin to twist across his face, taking satisfaction in fanning the flames of guilt that had flushed her cheeks two shades deeper. "You two have a point and it's not like I haven't been thinking about those things, too. I know I will have to change the way I have been handling myself, Amy, and the point you made yesterday afternoon about the reasons Skippy and his friends turned out like they did didn't fall on deaf ears. I heard you loud and clear and I know I need to fix this sooner than later."

"You're not mad?"

"No, I'm not mad," he reassured the embarrassed friend and turned to include the older woman who had been taking pleasure out of watching the interaction, "or you either."

Margie sat next to Ty and said, "You don't act very excited for someone who just found out he is getting a new truck," she teased.

"Wait, that was for real?"

Amy's intuition set off flares from sensing a setup, _'What just happened, here?'_ but how did Margie know the object of their intimate discussion would overhear them? _'I will definitely question her about why she would take such a big chance like that with me and Ty later…, when I can get her away from prying ears!'_

The intuitively adaptive elder woman could see that her flustered friend may have unsettled issues with the way she had just handled nudging the friends and ex lovers' complex relationship into another gear and diverted the possibility of any uprising by suggesting, "Amy, when you get finished eating, dear, you should go ahead and use the things in Ty's bathroom to fix yourself up a bit before you tackle Samantha's little problem."

"Problem?" Ty asked with undisguised amusement.

Amy scoffed, "Like you didn't overhear that, too?"

Ty clipped off the end of a strip of bacon with his teeth, "Might've."

Watching him enjoy seeing her discomfort a bit too much, Amy moved his bantering aside, "I hope I don't let Sammy down because I have absolutely no experience whatsoever with donkeys. I hope Petey isn't as hard headed as I've heard some donkeys can be."

Unable to pass on one more goodhearted dig at the proven world class horse trainer, "Well, if he is as hard headed as they say, he won't know what hit him when he meets his match today."

Her jaw dropped at the reminder of his astute and recently mislaid sense of humor, "alright, Mr. Smarty-Pants Veterinarian, come out there with us if you think you might have learned something in all those fancy books you've been reading and show us how it's done!"

Mr. Smarty Pants Veterinarian threw up his hands, "OK, I'll admit I don't know a damn thing about being a donkey shrink," stuffing the rest of the crisp slice of bacon into his mouth, "but I ain't gonna miss watching the three of you in the same pen trying to figure out who's the boss."

* * *

After he had scraped up the last remains of a hastily disposed of breakfast, Margie picked up Ty's plate and walked up to the sink to rinse it in the soapy water before putting it in the dishwasher with all the other breakfast utensils. "I hope you don't mind that I told Amy she could use some of Charlene's things left in your bathroom. She said she was out of some things she keeps in her suitcase and figured on being home this morning instead of getting waylaid here so I suggested she should go find whatever she needed and use them."

"That's fine, Margie. Not a problem for me."

She didn't expect it would be an issue for the easy going and practical young man, but she also knew he was far from being finished with the matter, "Go ahead," she said without looking back, "I can tell you've got something to say about what you think I did just then."

He thought before he let it out, _'Now's as good a time as any. I can't just let her pull this kind of thing without letting her know how big of a blow up she could have caused,'_ then he let it out anyway, "I know you well enough to know why you did it, and…, that's OK, I guess, because I couldn't say that you are wrong, but it could have gone badly, Margie. I hope you realize that. Amy deserves better than that."

"I know she does…, and so do you," she answered quietly, then spun around to drive home a point to the young man to whom she had come to adore and respect, her index finger aimed straight between his eyes, "but you two have got to get over whatever it is that keeps you from being full on with each other and I just don't know if it will ever get it done without somebody putting a boot up each of your asses. You and Amy are as good of a fit together as anyone I ever saw, and that is saying a _lot_ considering you are the only fella I've ever met that I thought was a good match for my Charlene, but the reality of it is that she is gone and can't ever come back. Look, Ty, you and Amy have gotta get it through your thick sculls that you can't let people you love this much get away from you. It's damn rare, what you two had together…, still got most of it from the looks of things, so it'd be for your own good, the both of you, to figure out how to stop holding back and make things right between you again, and I don't mean tomorrow or the day after that."

Having proven himself to be a good student, Ty heeded the much respected woman's experienced advice, "Amy and I have some things that need to be worked out. You are right…, we will talk later..., today," emphasizing that he had collected the matter of urgency she had implied. "That much I can promise, anyway."

"I hope so. And don't forget about how my baby, your daughter, feels about her. Samantha thinks the world of Amy and I'd hate to see her quit coming around now that they have gotten to know each other better. Having a woman closer to her mother's age has made a difference in her. That is something to think about."

"I think about it all the time, Margie. I knew going in that it would be impossible for anybody to replace her mom, especially a guy like me trying to learn on the fly how to be a parent. I didn't come into this without considering there would be some of the most intimidating challenges I've ever faced, but I promise you and Clint that I will do everything I can to give her the best I have every day to get it done the best I know how, even if it means swallowing my pride once in a while."

"We knew that about you from the start, Ty. Clint and I both think you have done a wonderful job so far and will continue to do so. That is why we want to get our affairs in order to make sure that you can do it without working yourself to death in the process. You need to stop thinking it would be wrong for you to take the time to squeeze a little joy out of life for yourself. We want to help you do that and by the end of next week we should have it all figured out."

"What are you talking about, ' _affairs in order?"_

It means what it sounds like it means. Clint and I are not getting any younger. We've talked it over and we have decided to get out wills rearranged, as well as Charlene's estate, to not only make sure that Samantha's needs are met for all the schools she wants to take advantage of, but to give her a head start if she chooses to be a doctor, veterinarian, or even Prime Minister if she likes to argue with people that much. What I am trying to say is that you will never have to worry about coming up with the funds for tuition or anything else to help Samantha live the life she chooses."

Ty leaned forward, crossing his elbows and resting them against the table, "It's weird, talking about the future like this. I am having hard enough time finding my footing where I am today. Growing up the way I did, thinking about anything past next week was pointless. My Dad and Mom had all they could handle to get through any given day, living from paycheck to paycheck, let alone thinking about life in years down the road. Sam's a lucky kid to have great grandparents like you and Clint and a mother like Charlie. I'll do the best I can to see that she makes the most of her opportunities to do whatever she chooses to do with her life, but most of all, I want her to remember to be happy. Although money should make anyone's problems in life easier to overcome, it isn't the end all answer either. Look at all the people we know who have always had plenty of money and never learned how to enjoy what they have."

Margie reached for his crossed arms and put her hands across them, "It comforts me to know you understand the more important parts of living, Ty, but there's more. In case you are wondering about where you are going to be living while all of this is going on, we will be leaving the ranch and all our assets to Samantha with you as her legal guardian and the executor of the estate until she gets old enough to be on her own. That is why Clint has the meeting set up with our lawyer this morning, to get the legal part of all of this arranged. You should have more than enough funds for operating the ranch and anything else you want to do as long as you are diligent with your business responsibilities, you know, paying the bills on time and not spending more than you're takin' in. There will be people that we have done business with for many years to help you after we are gone or for some reason unable to make competent decisions. There are a million things to discuss and we should have plenty of time to work it all out. I just thought it is time to tell you what is going on and let you be thinking about your part in this."

"I hope you and Clint know that is not why I decided to take responsibility for Charlie's daughter, to take advantage…, I mean no disrespect, Margie, but I should be able to take care of Sammy just fine on what I will earn at the clinic…."

"Amy hit the nail square on the head with you, didn't she?"

"Huh?"

"Since you were snooping around the hallway earlier and overheard our conversation, you should know what I mean."

"The part about not letting people help me when I need it…,?"

Margie accentuated the painfully obvious by throwing up her hands to frame a strained voice, " _The part about not letting ANYBODY help you when you need it,"_ and sighed away her frustration. "True, most folks might offer to help you expecting to call in the favor someday, but one of the things that keeps bouncing off that hard head of yours is that you _finally_ have folks in your life that would do anything they could to make sure you have all the support you need for whatever it is you are having trouble with just because they want to see you succeed. Don't tell me that it doesn't do a little good for your heart when you do something for someone you care about and not expect anything back in return. What makes you think that nobody else has that same feeling? The feeling might be rare, _but it's not exclusive to you!_ Why is that concept so hard for you to get?"

Ty had no answer that could hold water against the discerning woman sitting there looking him straight in the eye. Experience had taught him differently about most people, but most people were not the families that had taken in a smartass teenager with a chip on his shoulder and looking for the quickest way out or a broken young man trying to put his life back together after he had lost the most important part of it to a few bad decisions and ill turns of fate. "I just couldn't let you think that…,"

"Absolutely not! In most cases, yes, and with any of the other men that Charlene considered while she was dating we would have had to worry about those things. You should know that we did not make these decisions without putting a lot of thought into it. My father used to say, "When your life might depend on who you have chosen as a friend, you look for a man who would face the devil with you and try to get in the first punch." We believe you are that kind of man, Ty. Very little about the things you have had to overcome in the past couple of years was fair to you, yet here you are, still facing the devil and looking to get in that first punch. It's high time things come back to you for not quitting on us. As for when Samantha gets older, whatever you and her work out when the time comes will be up to you two. Clint and I realize we will be long gone by the time she comes of age and inherits the ranch but as long as you live up to your commitment, which we have no doubt you will, you will always have a place here on 8S. It could be that you would continue to live right here, just like always, but if she wants this house to herself, hopefully to start a family of her own someday, there will be a fund set up to build a nice place for you on a piece of ground that we can pick out together. We have a beautiful spot in mind that we would love to show you with a wonderful view of the mountains and enough land to run livestock on, if you want. There's enough room to build a big house and a barn with stables, even a clinic if it works out that's what you want. You probably wouldn't have to work full time if you didn't want to, which would make it easier to keep up with all Samantha's goings on, but I doubt that it would suit you, not to be doing something constructive, so Clint will be glad to offer you any advice you are looking for after you have had time to let all this soak in a bit. I'd be expecting for him to invite you to the lawyer's office for a chat and with the banker as well."

Trying to fathom this new information, Ty's eyes glazed over in amazement as he tried to come up with the words to convey his take on his latest turn of fate, "Margie…, I don't know what to say…,"

"Don't be too quick to think you are getting off easy on this deal, young man. Although your biggest responsibility, and biggest worry I'd bet, will be to keep our girl out of trouble and on the right path through her teenage years. Easier said than done, lemme tell ya. Charlene made a believer out of me on that one and her daughter is just as strong minded and impulsive as her mother was. You'll have to keep a close eye on her without crowding her too much. I learned that the hard way."

"I will have to wise up to stay ahead of her, and get a lot tougher, I can see that."

Margie let out a sharp chuckle, "You'd better get on top of that as soon as you can because she's growing up faster than you will ever believe is possible, and with all this social media stuff kids have these days it just gets harder all the time. You'll have to keep a tight lead, but make sure there's enough love left in the slack to keep her from resenting you. I think you've got it in you. That kid already thinks you hung the moon, just be honest with her and keep a set of boundaries set up to give her something to shoot for in toeing the line. Probably won't happen, exactly like you think it should all the time, but a line is a line and knowing where it is will to keep her as close to being centered as you're going to get. Having a partner to team up with someday would be pretty helpful, don't you think?"

He still had hope that his inherited grandmother was right. He needed for her to be right. "If it was the right partner, yes, it would."

After giving her words enough time to run their course, she continued, "There is a lot going on around here even if it doesn't look like it. That's one of the things I am trying to get across to you. We are putting a lot of faith in you to take care of what the McCrary family has built over several generations. Clint and I have made the most of a long life together doing just that and we feel that you are the best choice for making sure our great granddaughter carries on our family traditions here in Alberta. That being said, you are going to have to put a lot of faith in us, too, so be thinking about everything I've told you and get hold of the idea that it isn't going to be necessary to work yourself to death at your day to day job to get by. We will show you how."

"I get it, all of what you have told me, and I honestly appreciate what you are doing for me, I do. I just haven't figured out how you busted me for being in the hall listening to you and Amy talking."

* * *

"See! He's like that all the time now!" the youngest client Amy had ever worked with vented her frustration. "Every time I bring his feed and try to pet him he knocks the bucket out of my hands and spills it all over the ground, then he buts me with his stupid head and knocks me down! He's makin' me really mad!" Sammy complained to her impromptu equine coach as she demonstrated the example of her problem with the miniature donkey with the maximum attitude.

"OK, slow down." Amy spoke in a calm, gentle voice like she always did when there was a need to win the confidence of a troubled animal, and now to a gung-ho six-year-old on a mission to re-tame her once upon a time favorite pet. The taller trainer bent at the waist in her first attempt to take the edge off her protégé's temper, "Look at his ears, Sammy. See how they are twitching around and pulled back a bit? That almost always means that he is annoyed and might get testy if you push him too hard."

"Yeah, like _he's_ the one who has a reason to be testy."

"He's just an animal, Sammy. All Petey wants it to know that he pleases you and that you will give him some love if he behaves like he should."

"Well, _that's_ never gonna happen! He's gotten too mean."

Margie elbowed Ty's rib, "This is better that watchin' those reality shows on TV. Hey, there's an idea!"

"Yeah, that's _exactly_ what we need, having a bunch of TV people out here watching us make fools of ourselves so everyone around the world can make fun of us and insult our intelligence on Twitter."

Margie chuckled at the thought, "At least we'd be gettin' paid for it instead of doin' it for free." Then, turning more serious, "So, you think she can do anything to help them out?"

Ty bent down to pick up Sassy and scratch her head for all the rubbing she had done against his ankle to get him to notice she was helping them watch the action in the ring, "Weeellll, I'd say she has her hands full, but yeah, I'd put my money on Amy. She doesn't know when to quit, so, either those two will be getting along soon or she will wear them out trying."

Margie considered his opinion, then offered hers, "She has the patience for it, but both of those two little shits are hell bent to outlast the other, so it's gonna be interesting to see how she does it, if she can."

Petey had gotten bored with the miniature human bonding exercise and wondered off to the far side of the pen to regroup. Amy took the opportunity to drop to one knee and offer some advice to the pouting little girl still glaring across the pen at her furry former mini friend.

"See! He don't even try anymore,' continuing the pouting. "He's nothing but a stubborn little ass."

"Hey!"

Sammy's temper shattered like glass at thinking her mentor was disappointed in her. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to swear!"

"It's OK…., this time, but see? That's exactly what I have been trying to show you."

"What do you mean? We've just been looking at each other until I finally outstared him, then he got bored and left."

"That's all you've gotten out of working with him this morning?"

The youngest mule skinner in Alberta was ashamed of her apparent failure, "Yeah, I guess so."

"Look at me, Sammy. What do you think I'm seeing right now?"

"My face?"

"Not just a face! A _frowny_ face, that's what I see. That's what Petey sees too. Think about it, when you see one of the other kids at school and they have a look on their face like you are wearing right now, do you want to go play with them?"

"No, I guess not?"

"How come?"

"Because if they got a stick up their butt about something I don't want to hear them whinin' about it. I just want to play and have fun," a perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation in her brutally honest six-year-old opinion.

"Hey! Again? Does that come from your dad, or your grampa?"

"Ohhhh, boy," Margie uttered into the fence rail she tried to hide behind.

"Gram says it all the time!"

Amy looked over Sammy's shoulder and pulled her into a hug so as not to let the girl see her face when she saw Ty choking down a full on belly laugh and the gray haired great grandmother of seventy-five years trying her best to be invisible.

"We are going to have to talk about your vocabulary when we are done here."

"I won't do it again!" fearing that her coach was so disappointed in her that she might quit on the spot.

"Well, let's not focus on that right now." Amy felt the need to take a little time to reassure her half-sized apprentice and placed both her hands upon Sammy's shoulders to underscore the message, "What we need to do is get that frown off your face and put a smile back on so Petey thinks you are actually happy to see him and might be fun to hang out with."

"You mean, like this?" showing all but the two missing baby teeth in the middle of a stretched effort to make nice.

"No, sweetie, you don't have to break you face to show him how nice you want to be to him," again looking over her shoulder to see if the audience at the edge of the pen had thinned out, which it hadn't. Even Sassy wanted to take in the show.

"It really doesn't take any more than the way I am looking at you right now. See? I don't have to have a big fake smile to let you know that I am enjoying myself and not looking for a fight, and _maybe_ , just a little bit of fun to hang out with," digging the over eager six-year-old in the belly with a playful poke of a finger.

The rebounding mini trainer giggled and Amy could see the wind coming back into her sail, "Okaaay, I have an idea. You wanna try it for me?"

"Yeah, if you think it will work."

"Tell you what I want you to do…, sit down, right on your little butt, and see if you can keep that look on you face until he decides to come over and see what you are up to."

"You said butt."

"I guess your dad will have to have a talk with both of us now," giving the dread face to her giggling student. "Wait, we can't forget about your Gram. I think she gets to sit in front while we all get the speech about talking naughty."

"She's the worst, alright."

"Sit…, right here," Amy instructed, patting the soft dirt with her hand.

Sammy the trainer sat down as directed and the coach stood up, checked her protégé's attitude which appeared to be much improved, and walked away. "Keep that face going and you'll see what I'm talking about."

Sammy nodded, full of revived anticipation for winning over her rebellious friend. Amy took a break to go and stand with the others at the edge of the arena.

"Whaddaya think?" The proud great grandmother asked of the notoriously impatient student. "Will she stick it out until he comes to her?"

"I think I have made much more progress with the other mule headed attitude than with Petey's. That's the one I'm more interested in right now."

"Thank you for taking the time to do this for her, Amy," Ty spoke up. "I seem to be saying that a lot lately."

"I like hearing it, so no need to stop on my account," she replied, revitalized by apparent progress with her pupil…, and her pupil's parent.

"I mean it. What you are showing her this morning is more than how to get along with a misbehaving pet. With a little bit of luck and a few failed tries to prove you wrong, she should be able to use the lesson you are teaching her today for the rest of her life. I'll make sure she never forgets it."

Amy had almost forgotten the feeling that warmed her inside when something magical happened through her work, especially if she was not getting paid for it. She had been all around the world working with some of the finest bred horses in existence and nothing she had experienced could replace the gratification she felt working with a little girl in a nearly empty pen in the middle of nowhere, Alberta. No money, no fame, no artificial satisfaction from presumptuous employers for a reward, only knowing she had a part in a young girl in need of something good happening in her life getting a fair shake today. That was more than worth the effort. Realizing that the rambunctious child just might use her lesson to get through a rough patch someday returned the value of the lesson in full and she showed an appreciative smile back to her small audience.

"You stupid donkey!"

Amy puckered her lips, "It would appear that our work here is not _quiiiite_ finished." With a shrug of her shoulders, Amy turned to rush to the aid of her fallen student, just now clambering to her feet and dusting herself off after Petey had gotten close enough to bowl her over backwards with his snout and still standing there grinning like he had enjoyed immensely the attempt at bonding with his would-be trainer.

"Why don't we call it a lesson, Sam?"

"But he's not fixed yet!"

Amy returned to her knee, "Sometimes it takes a few tries before we get through to animal, sooo, you need to not give up. It will happen, trust me."

"I don't know, Amy. Petey sure is stubborn."

"Well, you should have seen you dad when he was younger. He didn't think anyone could break him either, but look at him now, so _niiiice_ and _eeeasy_ to get along with."

"What are you two giggling about?"

"Oh, nothing, really." Amy bit her lip and gave the universal unspoken instruction that all females understood regardless of age, _'Don't say a word!'_ the younger girl near bursting at learning another cool secret about her new dad.

"Yeah, right," and gave each of them a suspicious look while trying to crack the code. "I'll take care of Petey. You two go up to the house and get cleaned up because we're going to the _movies_!"

"Beauty and the Beast!" the less depressed student trainer perked up, "You'll love it, Amy! It's in 3-D! Everybody says it's awesome!"

"Whaddaya say, coach? Wanna get some lunch in town and see an _awesome_ matinee, maybe even a scoop of ice cream on the way home, or two if you behave yourself and quit swearing in front of the kid?"

Her mouth rearranged a pleased smile into falling ajar at the unexpected ridicule, but then recovered, "I'd have to call Lou."

"Don't worry about Lou. I called her earlier to see what she would recommend and it sounds like we are all set. She, Katie, and Georgie are going to meet us at Antonio's Pizza at twelve thirty so, get a move on, you two."

* * *

Amy's new Dodge led the way down 8S Ranch's long meandering driveway to the gate at the entrance. As much as she was looking forward to a carefree afternoon with some of her dearest family and friends, she also planned on heading home as soon as the festivities were over so she could catch up on some much needed sleep. She paused to let the automatic opener "see" the big blue truck to begin the mechanical authorization to leave the property and when she eased through it a shiny new black truck pulled in off the road and stopped beside her. Ty noticed that Amy must have known who it was because she pulled in close and rolled down her window. Stopping along her passenger side, they each rolled down their windows so she could explain, "Ty, it's Win, from Edmonton. Go ahead and meet Lou in town and I will be along in just a while, OK?'

"Sure thing. Hey Win. Looks like you just picked up a new one. Sure is a beauty."

"Thanks, man. I had to come all the way down to Calgary to get the exact one that I wanted. The bonus I got from the Pittingers came in handy right about now. I'd have had to wait a while to buy this one without it."

Amy contested the logic, "Your old truck? Wasn't it new last year?"

"Yeah, that's true, but it was time to step up to a better model. My old truck was not quite what I expected and _this one_ was calling my name, so it's all mine now."

Again trying to follow his motives, Amy supposed that trucks were not the only thing he traded often and tested him again, "You just happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to run that new truck of yours the long way around back toward Edmonton?"

"No, I just thought since I hadn't seen you in a while that I may as well look you up since I was this close so we could do some catching up. Annnd, I have a proposition for you."

Ty had been third wheel to this interaction long enough, "Well, I guess I'd better get my co-pilot on into town. We have some people waiting to meet us for lunch and I don't want to keep them waiting."

"That'd be Amy's sister, Lou? Yeah, I spoke to her earlier. She's the one who told me where to find you."

"I'll have to thank her for you when I see her," Ty said, all the while thinking _"Eat shit, asshole.'_

"Do that! Tell her I sure do appreciate her helping me out like that."

Amy could have lost her lunch, if she'd had any to lose. Her stomach was in a knot from looking at Ty's face and knowing what he must be thinking. _'Please, God, don't let Win screw this up for us now that I have Ty this close to forgiving me so we can finally move on from this mess.'_

"Ok, then. Have a good visit while you, _catch up."_ Ty rolled up his window and was gone before she had time to explain that she shouldn't be too long.

Amy was near bursting out in tears, her enthusiasm for the day plummeting as she watched Sammy and her dad disappear around the bend and leave her behind.

Trying her best to regain composure enough to carry on a casual conversation with the man she knew had more on his mind than taking the long way home to Edmonton, Amy let her eyes move back toward the new truck, "Wow! Looks like you outdid yourself with that one."

"Has every option available. I figured I may as well go for it this time. No reason to have regrets later because I wimped out instead of going for the best there was out there."

"That's nice Win, but I should…,"

"How about you find a place to park your truck and we'll go for a first drive together. I have some things I want to talk to you about."

"Can't it wait? I really need to…,"

"No, it can't wait any longer, Amy. I've given you plenty of space since we were at the Pittingers place and I can't stop thinking about you. All I want is a chance to make it up to you and show you that you haven't seen the real me yet. I was just nervous about all the changes you were making to the design of the stable and whether I could keep up with the schedule. It'll be different this time, I promise I'll make it worth your time."

"Look, Win, I really do need to go."

"I can't let you leave without hearing me out first," the insistent suitor remained steady with his intent.

As Amy struggled to come up with a response that would not offend someone she hoped to maintain a good working relationship with in case the need ever arose again, the sound of a diesel truck making good time grew louder around the bend coming from town.

"Win, I just…,"

When he attempted to cut her off again her patience began to wane. The words that she had not taken the time to measure before delivering them were interrupted by Clint's big dually as he rode the brakes hard to get slowed down enough to pull into the drive beside his most recent and welcomed guest.

"Hey, Amy. Glad to see you before you left for town and your big date with Ty and Sammy."

Amy had never seen the darker side of Clint McCrary and a strange feeling poured over her when she saw his expression turn raw.

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it almost as much as Sammy," she answered, suspecting something fishy about the coincidence of the well timed intervention.

"Win Easton, is that you in that big ole truck?"

"Yes sir, Mr. McCrary. Good to see you again."

"You two know each other?"

Amy studied the wary glare Clint refused to let go of, an implication that there was much she did not know about the apparent business the two of them had had in the past.

"I trust you slept well last night?" Clint continued revealing hints for the sake of discouraging their visitor, nothing subtle about it. "Margie said you had a nice talk while you had breakfast this morning. She really enjoyed watching you work with Sammy. Said you made some good progress even if the donkey is still being an ass about it all," having a chuckle at his corny reach for humor.

"We'll get there. We can't stop now," Amy reassured her host for the past day, "I will keep at it with them until she sees that a little problem like theirs can be fixed."

"That's good, Amy. I'm happy to see you taking such an interest in our girl like this. She really needs someone to fuss over her right now and she thinks you are just about the best thing that ever was. I appreciate all you are doing for her. So, Win, what brings you around here? Never expected to see you anywhere around these parts again."

"Just here to see Amy and make a her a proposal she can't refuse," he said, tipping his hat with a confident flair.

"Yeah? Seems to me like you always have a lot of those proposals," then redirecting his attention to the woman sitting confused in the middle of the interaction, "Guess I'd better see about the old woman and what she's up to. I'll bet after your visit, Amy, that she has all kinds of things for me to do."

"Don't worry, Clint, the last I saw of her she was feeling pretty sheepish," a playful grin seeming to ease the tension in the air.

"How so?" knowing it took a lot for anything to throw his unflappable wife off her game.

"It has to do with a little scolding she has coming from a certain vet about using a bit too much potty mouth around his daughter."

"Lookin' forward to that!" pushing a button on his sun visor to open the gate before tipping his hat, "Take care, Amy. You too, Win," and driving off toward the big house high up on the hill behind her.

Amy returned her attention to the man in the new truck, "What the hell was that?"

"Get in and we can talk about what I came here for in the first place," maintaining the bravado that was his trademark, "and then I'll tell you about how I know Clint."

 _To be continued_


	62. Chapter 62

CHAPTER 62

The hum of pavement under the tires was the only thing breaking a dreary silence in the big red dually as Ty and Sammy closed in on the city limits of Hudson. Neither one of them had felt much like talking since they had left Amy and Win together at the front gate of 8S Ranch. Ty checked his rear view and could see the unanimously sullen mood had uncharacteristically restrained his passenger as much as neglecting to ask him to turn on the radio so she could sing along with her favorite country songs while practicing her stage act in the back seat. The normally active chatterbox had spent the entire twenty-minute trip into town staring blankly at the miles of fence rows whizzing past her window and the driver had endured the silent treatment as long as he could, "Hey Sam, you're awfully quiet back there. What's goin' on?"

She didn't bother to look back at him when she answered, "Amy's not coming to the movies with us, is she? Why did she change her mind?"

Ty couldn't be sure how to answer the question because he had no idea what kind of proposition Win Easton could have made for Amy to have broken their date, and no way was _he_ going to make a promise that Sammy's coach may not be able to keep. "I suppose you will have to ask her that, next time you see her," and tried to control his anger as he fumed, _'If Amy is going to break her promise to Sammy, then SHE is going to be the one who owns up to it, face to face.'_

"What did that man want to talk to her about?"

"I think he might have had a job offer for her." _'And a bit more than that from the look of him,'_ he privately assumed. "He is the guy that built the stables in Edmonton that Amy just finished consulting on a while back and it sounded like he had another job lined up to offer her."

"What's cun-sol-ting?"

"A consultant is a person who is smart about how to do a job well, like Amy knows about working with horses and barns, and shares their ideas to someone who is trying to do the job and tells them how they could to do it better."

"That guy had to ask Amy how to build a barn?"

"Sort of."

"He must be _really_ stupid."

Although he wanted very much to agree with the critic in the back seat, he realized this was one of those times he needed to step up to do his job and be the rational adult, "That's not very nice, Sam. It was a special barn."

"Why did he have to come here and mess everything up? It was going to be awesome to bring Amy with us to the movies. Now she's _never_ gonna get to come with us," she griped, wallowing in her pity pit as she retaliated against disappointment.

"Look, Sam, I know you were looking forward to having her come with us, so was I, but we can try again later. She's just busy with work stuff right now, that's all."

"I _hate_ work!"

"Why do you hate work?"

"Because everybody is so busy doing it that they never have time to do anything fun with me! You work all the time and now she's doing it too. If she helps that guy, she will go away and Petey will _never_ get fixed."

Ty had promised himself that he would always take the time to talk to his kids, when he had them, about things that bothered them. He hoped that he could help them learn how to cope with setbacks instead of lashing out in anger like he had always done. "Work is how we earn money so we can do things like eat pizza and go to the movies, sooo, without work we would be stuck at home anyway because we wouldn't have any money to pay for doing those things."

A lack of retort from the back seat suggested that his explanation was not ignored, _'That must have worked,'_ he thought. He could tell the idea had stuck in her brain while she hashed out the logic of his example and the dad in training savored his small victory, proud of himself for triggering a meaningful thought process.

"How much does that man pay her to get her to help him?" she asked.

"I honestly don't know, Sam. It's none of our business how much money Amy makes when she is working. That's not the kind of thing you should ever ask someone."

"Why not? How's anybody supposed to know if they have enough money to pay her if they don't ask how much money it costs?"

Ty looked up to see a reflection of the determined little girl giving him the _'So, you think I'm an idiot?'_ look, and laughed inside as he watched her, waiting for a response, thinking, _'How old is this kid again?'_

"Asking just to be nosey is not cool, Sam," Ty explained, "but if you are actually going to pay her for her advice, that's different. You'd just tell her what your problem is, say…, your problem with Petey, for instance, and then she would tell you how much she thinks it will cost to do it."

"I have some money left over from my allowance. I could pay her!"

"How much ya got?"

"I got thirty-six dollars left over. I had a lot more but I bought my new back pack at Wal Mart last Saturday."

"You would give all your allowance money to pay Amy to fix Petey?"

"THAT IS WHY I HAVE TO ASK HER HOW MUCH SHE WANTS TO DO IT, SO I KNOW IF I GOT ENOUGH TO PAY HER!"

' _Intense little shit!'_ he thought, trying not to ruin the moment by letting his smile slip out. _'The apple does not fall far from the tree, that's for sure.'_

"I can get Gram or Gramps to give me some more," she reasoned.

Ty hesitated, eventually deciding he should not bring up the complications of going into debt to the junior business executive just yet, _'Better leave that one for another day.'_

The new dad watched the wheels turning in his daughter's head as she sorted through her predicament. He was unsure whether to be pleasantly surprised at the little girl's quick uptake of the concept of doing business or to be heartbroken that she thought she would have to pay her new hero to get her to come back and help with Petey like she had promised.

He had also been quick to learn that redirecting anger really did have a purpose. Feeding enough information into his daughter's head to instigate a plot to steal Win Easton's potential employees out from under him had kept Sammy busy for the remainder of the trip and served to divert her away from being so disappointed.

* * *

"We're here. Lou and the girls are already waiting on us."

When they came through the front door of Antonio's Pizza, Ty could see Lou's face wilt in confusion and knew he'd better get ready for the looming inquisition.

"Where's Amy?" Georgie asked, "I thought she was coming with you?"

Ty started to give the standard excuse for a change of plans, but then he remembered, "Oh yeah, I was supposed to relay a "Thank you, Lou," for helping Win Easton find Amy."

"What do you mean, find her? All he said when he called the house was that he was passing through town and hadn't seen Amy for a while and thought he might stop by and say hello. I told him that she was working with a client's horse at the 8S Ranch. How the he…, ummm, how did he find her way out there? He is from Edmonton. He wouldn't know his way around down here in Hudson, would he?"

Ty flopped back against his chair and answered, "Well enough to meet us at the gate when we were on our way here."

Lou could see that Sammy was disappointed, "And she stayed to talk to him instead of coming to town with you guys?"

Sammy sensed a chance to take out a little frustration of her own and interjected, "He said he had a propizzission for her. Guess it must have been really important to make her stay with him instead of coming with us."

A burning blur of rage set into the older Fleming sister's eyes as she immediately picked up her phone to see if she had missed the message that had not come yet. Her hands shook in anger when she thumbed the keypad, all in caps, 'WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU DID NOT JUST DUMP ON TY AND SAMMY FOR A 'CHAT' WITH WIN EASTON?"

There was no misunderstanding about whether Lou Fleming was displeased with her sister and when she put her phone down on the table everybody flinched, "What's wrong Mommy?" Katie asked, beginning to catch onto the notion that the pizza party had turned sour.

Ty broke in before things got any worse out of hand, "It's OK, Katie, there has just been a little change of plans, that's all."

"She's gotten pretty good at changing plans," Georgie snarled.

"Georgie!" Lou snapped.

"It's true."

"Don't be mean," the flustered mother insisted. "We don't know what is going on yet so keep a lid on it, OK?" then turning to the deflated man across the table, "I'm so sorry, Ty. I never dreamed anything like this could happen, again."

"It's no big deal, Lou. He just said he had a new job she might be interested in and wanted to tell her about it."

Lou knew Ty was stunned by the unexpected setback and her heart ached for him and Sammy. She had spoken with Margie only this morning after the inside informant had called while Amy was getting ready and she had said it appeared that things between the horse trainer and the vet were moving in a much more positive direction.

The veins in her temples pounded and the always outspoken sister was at a rare loss for words. All she could think to do was to reach across the table and clasp his hand in hers. Just as she was about to apologize to her 'adopted little brother,' in her sister's behalf, her jaw suddenly dropped and her eyes widened to the size of the saucer under her coffee cup.

Ty turned around just in time to see the restaurant's door swing open and Amy coming through it reading messages on her cell phone. The strangest reaction crept across her face as she looked at her sister and blinked a couple of times to take the sting away from the urgent message she had just received.

She walked up to the table and held out her phone so that Lou could see what she had just read, "You couldn't give me just a couple of minutes to get here before deciding to throw me under the bus?"

"Amy!" A burst of enthusiasm shot through Sammy when she heard her coach's voice and in a split second she had left her chair to greet the redeemed friend, meeting Amy who had bent down to catch the hug she couldn't have avoided if she had tried.

"You didn't think I would miss out on pizza and a seeing "Beauty and the Beast" with you guys, did you?"

Sammy couldn't bring herself to answer, gasping in tears at being so overwhelmed by the surprising reparation.

Amy knew all too well the devastation that grips a child when they are left so vulnerable to disappointment at that age. She pulled up the chair the eager girl had vacated, scooping Sammy up and settling the girl in her lap while she sat, and then gave her a firm squeeze in her arms. "I'm sorry I'm a little late. I just had to tell Win that I appreciated his offer…,"

"I can pay you!" Sammy shouted as she pleaded into Amy's astonished eyes. "I'll give you everything I have saved up if you will stay!"

Amy had been more than a little pissed at Ty for driving off and leaving her to face Win and explain her way out of his proposal alone. As due punishment, she had chosen to let him stew for a while because of jumping to conclusions so quickly before she would call and tell him she would be along shortly. It was just like the two of them, always allowing the little things to plague their relationship by letting them get completely blown out of proportion and festering until they became a real and formidable problem, but this time their quick tempers had affected the innocence and trust of the little girl that had won both of their hearts. _'Not this time,'_ she vowed to herself, _'and never again,'_ "Oh, Sammy…," Amy broke down at thinking the little girl had thought she would abandon her for a stranger and rested her forehead against Sammy's, looking her straight on through welled up tears that had begun to streak down her cheeks, "Thank you, Sweetie, but you won't ever have to worry about getting me to stay. I'm not goin' anywhere and I would never take your money for helping you with anything. I'll be here to help you any time you want, all you ever have to do is call me. As a matter of fact, I was going to ask your dad if I could borrow you for a while after school's out this summer so you can help me get ready for my new clients to bring in their horses to Heartland."

"Really?"

"Really," she assured the hopeful child, sealing the promise by planting a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"So, you're all caught up with Win? No big job in Edmonton?" Ty asked, hardly believing what he had just heard and seen.

Amy knew there was one last suggestion of doubt hidden in the questions but had no desire to address his tone in front of the others. "No, I told Win I have no plans to leave home any time soon. I have too much to do to get everything here restarted again. I thanked him for the opportunity but I told him I am far too busy here to think about taking a job so far away from home."

Ty studied her as if he still had reservations about her turning down another lucrative deal only to remain local with her talents, but when she looked at him with those convincing blue eyes, he knew for sure. "That's good news. I'm happy for you, if that's what you really want."

She never took her eyes away from his emerald longing and there was more than enough determination present in their interlocked gaze to drive home her point, "Everything I need is right here. Things are going to be different from now on. You'll see."

"Mommy, why is everybody crying?" Katie asked when she noticed that even her own mother was trying to overcome losing her poker face to the emotion that poured out of the prospective family across the table from them.

"It's nothing, Honey. Everybody's just really happy right now. OK, everybody, Pizza's getting cold and we have a deadline to keep if we don't want to be late for the show."

* * *

Katie, Georgie, and Sammy insisted on being front and center of the big screen. It was a little too close for the others preference but the kids won out because of the occasion being declared "Kid's Day." Lou was desperate to be seated next to Amy and get the details about her stayover at 8S Ranch but after calling up all the dignity she could muster, settled on sitting to her daughter's left and let the others have a bit of room to aid them in mending a few fences. Sammy sat nestled between Katie and Amy with Ty on the outside to the right. He didn't want to get in the way of the moment Amy had shared with Sammy and opted to keep it going by letting the two of them sit together.

The show had reached a quiet spot and Amy looked across the row of fellow movie goers feeling thankful for being a part of the experience with them. Ty hadn't moved for several minutes and she knew from being at his side during his student days that it meant he had likely fallen asleep from being so far behind on rest regardless of how much he wanted to stay awake. She watched him nodding off and snapping his head sharply upward when he caught himself and giggled at how hard he was trying to be a part of what probably should have been a girls' only day at the movies seeing how his preferences for on screen entertainment usually consisted of massive explosions, plumes of fire, and all around mayhem.

Instinctively relaxed, Amy curled her arm inside of his and slipped her fingers around his hand giving it a squeeze to wake him. When he responded to her and realized what she had done he smiled and squeezed back, "Sorry, guess I dosed off for a minute."

"I thought you might want to see this," she replied.

"Something happen? What'd I miss?"

"No, this," and nodded toward the foursome in the seats next to her, biting her bottom lip at being so amused by her discovery.

Ty leaned forward in his seat to look around the comical looking woman wearing disproportionally sized 3-D glasses to see four more contented observers of the cinematic marvel, all with the same silly looking 3-D hardware, and the littlest ones casually swinging their feet a few inches shy of reaching the floor as they sat mesmerized by the story, hands stopped midway between the barrel sized container of popcorn and their open mouths.

Amy took off her glasses and then stretched nearer, waiting for him to lean closer before she whispered in his ear, "Look at her. Even if it's only for a little while, she doesn't have a care in the world right now. Isn't this what being a parent is all about, _Daaad_?"

Ty saw the sparkle flickering across her blue eyes even though the darkened room should have suppressed it. It was as though she hadn't almost lost it forever and as if he hadn't thought he would never see it again. Without thinking, he pulled up her chin to bring her dangerously close enough for a kiss before shaking himself out of the spell she had cast upon him so unexpectedly, but before he could pull away she used her free hand to cup his cheek in her fingers and keep him close enough to finish the shortened attempt on her own accord. It lingered soft and slow, the taste of salt, butter, and Diet Coke bringing back fond memories of some of their earlier movie going days up in the highest rows until one of the kids seated behind them made a gagging sound that jerked the magic out from under them.

They straightened up in their stadium chairs and each of them took a guilty peek to see if anyone beside them had noticed their moment together. Sammy and Katie were still glued to the screen but Georgie and Lou shared the same, "Woah!" mouthed silently on their lips, seeming pleased that they had caught the couple in a once inconceivable reconciliation.

Amy was not going to let this moment go to waste and pulled him close to rest her head against his shoulder. 'Let 'em have their fun, it's worth it,' and soaked up the feeling until the lights came up at the movie's end.

* * *

"Well, girls, what did you think about the movie?" Lou asked.

"It was awesome!" the 'twins' answered in simultaneous enthusiasm.

"I'm glad you liked it. Sammy, would you like to stay over with Katie tonight? I'll call your gram and see if she's OK with it first, but I think we can talk her into it."

"Hey! I'm standing right here! You remember me, _her_ _parent_ , right?"

It had been a very long time since Lou had gotten to tease her younger sister and her boyfriend about their love life and she couldn't resist, "Well, I figured it would be OK with you, but I wasn't sure you two would be thinking straight, so…."

"Funny, Lou," Ty responded. "But that would be great, if that's what you guys want to do."

"Can I?" Sammy asked.

Ty bent down to pick the glowing little girl up and said, "Sure you can, right after we visit the Hitchin' Post for that ice cream I promised you."

Sammy kissed her dad on the cheek and squeezed him tightly around the neck, "Thank you!"

Amy maintained her presence beside Ty and they watched Lou heard the troupe of skipping kids toward the Expedition, Georgie in the middle with the two hyperactive younger kids in either hand. "It's been a pretty amazing day," Ty said to his _'it's not a real date,'_ companion.

"Yes, it has," then after a slight hesitation, Amy followed with, "I'd like to talk."

"I know. After the girls go to bed tonight maybe we can slip away and say what's on our minds."

"I hope you have a while," she said, "because we have a lot to talk about."

* * *

"Amy, will you read our bedtime story to us?" Both girls had conspired to a common cause.

"Of course, Sammy, but you remember what happened last time we tried this?"

"It was awesome, Katie! Amy was reading to me in my bed and she fell asleep and stayed with me all night. I never even kicked her like I usually do!"

"I don't think there is enough room for all of us," Katie noted, sizing up her bed for the extra sleepover guest, if needed.

"I think I can stay awake this time, girls. C'mon, let's get to it."

"Sooo, did you enjoy the movie, Daaad?" Lou asked Ty, practically bursting at the seams from wanting to prod her friend for more information.

"I wondered how long it would take for you to get around to that," was all he had to say.

"It was sweet, seeing you two like that again."

"Well, we have some talking to do, so I wouldn't make too much out of it just yet."

"Give Amy a chance, Ty. She still loves you very much and I know she wants to try to make you see that again. Don't you see how hard she is trying? Just promise me that you won't react too quickly and push her away until you've heard her out."

"I wouldn't do that to her, Lou. You know me better than that. It's just that so much has happened between us that I'm not sure either of us really have it in us to start over again. We couldn't make it when it was just the two of us, and now with Sammy…,"

"Can't you see how taken with Sammy she is? And, best I can tell, Sammy is crazy about her new coach, too."

"I can't let Sammy get her hopes up and then have Amy change her mind again. You saw how upset she was today. What if Amy hadn't come back like she did? That would have been a big setback her."

"But she did come back, and you saw how it affected Amy when she realized Sammy thought she had deserted you guys. She has fallen for that kid just as much as she has for you. Please, Ty, give her a chance to prove to you both that she means it when she says she wants to make a go of it here in Hudson and I am sure she will tell you that she plans for you guys being a big part of that."

"She said she wanted to talk tonight and we will do just that as soon as she is finished putting the girls to bed, if she doesn't fall asleep on us again," and he smiled, still surprised that the cowgirl and his daughter had hit it off as quickly as they had.

 _To be continued_


	63. Chapter 63

CHAPTER 63

Lou used hot decaff and a basket full of almost fresh banana nut muffins to bribe Ty into sitting with her at the kitchen table while they waited for Amy to reappear from Katie's room once the girls were tucked in for the night. He had almost forgotten how entertaining Lou could be when she was just being a "big sister" and letting her seldom seen easier-going side ramble on about family, work, and anything else that crossed her mind.

"So…., that was sweet…, that little incident in the theater," finally getting around to the not so private observation Lou and Georgie had made earlier during the movie. She offered him a tongue-in-cheek sympathetic eye suggesting she would be willing to listen if he cared to elaborate, and if that didn't crack him, she had plenty of other tactics left to try next.

"Yeah…, it…, kinda caught me by surprise," he begrudgingly responded, hesitant to open the door into his and Amy's delicate balance of trust to any more outside influences.

"You mean, the fact that you wanted to kiss her, or that she had to finish it for you when you choked?" a sly grin punctuating a half tease, but it didn't irritate him because he could tell that she was being straightforward and openly pleased to have seen them coming to some sort of understanding about forgiveness and finally moving on with their lives.

"I…, I wanted to, but…,"

"It's OK, Ty. There is no need to rush anything. Amy has said she wants to make a go of it here in Hudson with her business and although she had me questioning her commitment to that just like you did after not showing up at Antonio's with you and Sammy today, I think she answered our doubts, don't you?"

Before he could respond, "You two seem to be having quite a conversation," Amy observed as she approached them from the hallway.

Lou answered, "Yeah, we finally got the chance to catch up on a few things."

Experienced in matters of her big sister's assistance with her relationships, Amy noticed the satisfied look of a successful interrogation on Lou's face and one of relief on the other side of the table for the interruption, "I'll bet you did," and throwing him a lifeline, "OK, You, I have something I want you to see."

"What's up?" he asked.

"You'll see. C'mon, follow me."

Ty hiked across the gravel drive through the twilight trying to keep up with the extraordinarily energetic woman heading the way to the old Quonset barn. "What's out here that's so important at this hour?"

Glowing from anticipation preceding her disclosure, Amy grabbed hold of the heavy sliding door and leaned into it with a shoulder to push it open. When she flipped the switch to turn on the lights his jaw flopped open in disbelief from what he saw.

"I hope you don't mind. Grandpa, Dad, and I have found almost everything we needed to get it this far in fixing it up again."

Ty walked closer, taking every angle in as he circled his old GMC, "Amy? How….? You…, and Jack…? And your _Dad_?

"I asked Grandpa if he would help me see what it would take to repair the damage from the wreck and of course when Dad found out what Grandpa and I were up to he insisted that we needed him here to make sure everything was done right," rolling her eyes as she laughed. "We tried to hide it from him, Grandpa especially, because as you can imagine, the two of them on a project this big has been an exercise in patience all in itself. But, I have to hand it to him, he has actually done a lot of the work and went so far as to put himself out to find a salvage yard that had old trucks in stock and brought back some of the harder to find pieces to replace the ones that were bent too bad to fix."

"But…, who paid for the parts? These fenders, the door, the radiator…?" as he assessed the shiny new pieces with factory stickers still intact, "they're all brand new! I need to repay…,"

"No, Ty," Amy approached him and patted a firm hand into his chest as she cut him short, "You don't need to worry about any of that. Grandpa helped me look them up online and order the parts from a place that is making everything brand new that we needed to replace. Did you know that you could build a truck like this one completely brand-new right out of a catalog? It was amazing to see what people are doing with old cars and trucks these days."

"But, I wouldn't expect for anybody else to pay for the damages. It's my problem to fix it and…,"

Amy knew the quickest way to get him to back off his resistance would be to put him on the defensive, "You don't like it?"

"NO! Amy! It's not that! It looks _awesome_! It's just that…,"

"It's just that you still can't accept help from the people who love you and are very glad to still have you here with us even after a crash like this one?"

"No! Well, yeah! I don't know! Maybe!"

Amy threw up her hands and leaned back against her first project involving four wheels instead of hooves, "It's _my_ fault that you got dragged into this. I am _so sorry_ for all of it, Ty. You and your truck just got caught up in the crossfire of a fight that I didn't even know was going on at the time. Why wouldn't I want to fix it? Some of the best memories I have were made right here in the front seat of this truck…, and in the back," sharing a sentimental smile with the man who had not only taught her to drive in the vehicle, but how to move beyond the innocence of the seventeen-year-old farm girl she had been as well. "I wish it would have never happened, but it did, and I wanted to do something about it, just like I want to do something about us."

Ty didn't know how to respond. His ex-fiancée had reopened a couple of wounds that he was not sure could ever be completely healed, but he could not dismiss her enthusiasm as she pleaded her case.

"Amy, don't misread my reaction as not appreciating the gesture from you or the others. It means a lot to know you all feel strongly enough about me to think you should do something like this, it really does, but none of you owe me anything. If it wasn't for you and your family I probably would never have seen the other side of seventeen, let alone have the courage to go to school, or…,"

"Ty, will you just be quiet for a minute, _please_? There's more I want to show you." She reached inside the driver's side to wiggle the shifter to make sure the transmission was in neutral and turned the key.

The befuddled owner's eyes lit up when the engine fired on the first try and purred like a sewing machine, "Wow, it still runs!"

Amy's smile grew brighter at seeing her old driving instructor's reaction, "Not only is it still running, but, what would it take for a girl to get a ride in a cool old truck, like this one?"

"We can drive it, too?" His amazement bubbled over as he nearly leapt around to meet her at the driver's door to hold it steady, "Milady," and put his hand to the small of her back to encourage her to step up into the cab and slide to the middle of the seat.

She waited for him to join her and when he took his place behind the wheel, "Can you believe it," grinning like a little girl on Christmas morning, "you and me in this old truck again heading out on another joy ride?"

* * *

A thick stand of stray fescue offered no resistance to the stately front bumper of the '57 GMC as it plowed through it, pushing it aside as they followed the grown over two track road that she had asked him to take.

"Here! Stop here!"

He did as Amy asked and then backed the truck into a gap in the fence line where she pointed. When he turned off the ignition, "What are we doing way out here?"

"You don't recognize this place?" wrinkling her brow in disbelief.

He opened the door and stepped into the waist high grass. After giving his eyes a few seconds to adapt to the dim light he held out his hand to help Amy to climb down beside him. "It's the old jumping course I built for you."

" _That's right_ ," praising his keen memory. "I was beginning to think that bump on the head had been worse than we thought," and a reminiscing smile twisted from her lips.

"So…, why are we here? The place looks pretty sad. Doesn't look like anyone has been here for years."

Amy released the chains on the old-fashioned tailgate and reattached them to hold it horizontally to make them a seat, jumped backwards to sit on its yet unscratched upward side for the first time, and said, "I was out here just the other day, as a matter of fact. I still come here when I want to remember what it felt like back when Soroya and I used to come here and practice, before life got…, complicated."

"You didn't care much for it when I first built it, as I remember."

"What? I _loved_ this place!"

"No, Amy, you didn't. When I drove you and Soroya out here the first time to show off what I had been keeping as a secret and suggested that you two could use this as your practice ring you said something like, "Thanks, but no, I don't think so."

"I was just overwhelmed, Ty. I was _fifteen years old_. Guys I knew back then were still thinking about getting to first base, not doing _unbelievably amazing things_ for me, especially something as crazy as this jumping ring. It was by far one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for me, even to this day, but I seriously thought Grandpa might blow his top and fire you when he found out that you had taken so many bales of his hay and used his lawn mower to mow this entire field so I could jump Spartan."

"Well, I was crushed," he admitted. "I thought you didn't like it and thought I was dumb for doing it in the first place."

"That couldn't have been farther from the truth! After you showed it to us and then you let us out at the barn, Soroya lit into me, _big time_. She told me that I should be ashamed of myself for not giving you the biggest kiss you'd ever had, ' _Right on the mouth!_ ' she said, and thanking you for being so adorably sweet. It took me a couple of days to get up the courage to try out the course. That's the day you and Grandpa came by in the truck and saw us there. That's the day I fell head over heels in love with you, all smiling in that truck like you had really done something big, which you had, and I felt a lot better when I saw Grandpa smile back because I knew you were home free and he wasn't going to fire you. But, just so you know, Soroya and I had a plan to save you, if need be."

"Yeah?" and he shook his head as he glanced her way, "I'll bet you did!" Then Ty turned his face upward to the first sign of stars twinkling in the darkened skies as he also jumped backward to join his longest running true friend on the tailgate, "I remember that exact moment, too. I knew the second I saw you jumping that first rail on that big, beautiful horse that my work wasn't all for nothing, and when you smiled and waved back, that was it for me. I had thought earlier that you were a very pretty girl and it didn't take long to see that you were quite a piece of work, so small in stature and stubborn as a mule, but having the biggest heart I'd ever seen. I also saw that you had more than enough determination to back it up. It was amazing to see you up on Spartan's back in complete control of him, given what I'd seen of him after I first got here, and to think he was having as much fun as you were, that totally changed the way I looked at what you were doing when you worked all those hours and took all those chances with him. That is the exact instant I fell in love with you. It made me see how special you were and somehow I knew that my life would never be the same again because of having you in it."

Amy became quiet, watching her feet brush through the ripe grass beneath the tailgate.

After allowing his escort to be lost in the echoes of her past for what he thought to be long enough, "I wonder if it still works…," and without explanation jumped off the tailgate to explore inside the truck.

Afraid that the healing moment had been lost, "Where are you going?" she asked dejectedly.

Reaching for the knob to the only luxury he ever installed in the old truck, "Let's see…, there it is," and turned the volume up enough to be able to enjoy the music from where his partner anxiously awaited.

Ty didn't bother to slow down when he reached where she was sitting and moved right past as he used the truck's bumper to hop up in the wooden bed behind her.

"Hey, where'd you go?" she sounded concerned.

Without a word, Ty bent down and scooped his hands under her arms, "Ready?" and laughed at her giggling squeal as he lifted her to stand with him.

Amy's eyes darted around his face at having a good idea what he was up to, "What-are-you-doing?"

"We had our first dance right here in the bed of this old truck. How long has it been since we danced together?"

The surprising gesture had left her breathless, her head spinning with possibilities and regrets, "Way too long," she answered, shaking like the school girl she was when he lifted her into the floor of the makeshift dance floor to try and make up for their argument after his old truck broke down on the way to her high school formal. Taking his hand and fading into his poised embrace, Amy's world swirled around them in a mystical journey into the past, her heart pouring love through every vein of her body.

Neither of them knew how many songs had played, or for that matter what the tempos would have been if they had heard them, because their slow swaying embrace had lifted them to another place and time, one they each held onto as the place where everything was good and the future was still promising together and they were still so desperately in love.

Amy's knees were beginning to weaken, a sign that she should come back to reality before things got out of hand, and pulled back far enough to enjoy seeing him like this again, breathing in the warmth of being in his arms.

"Ohhh!" she winced at the stab of pain in her neck.

"What's the matter?" he asked, frightened by the intrusion of the calm that owned them.

"It's…, nothing, just a sore spot in my neck I got from sleeping half sitting up in Sammy's bed the other night."

"Hurts, huh?"

"Yes, a little. Sorry, I just…,"

"Here," he gestured, "Turn around and we'll see what we can do about that crick in your neck."

Doing as he asked, Amy turned and tilted her head to expose the back of her neck to the vet turned chiropractor.

He took time to run his fingers through her golden tresses to comb them aside, "Your hair is getting long again. It's so soft now."

"Yeah, I thought it was never going to grow back. I'm never cutting it again!"

Ty used the audible indications from Amy's responses to his probing fingers to locate the offending muscles, "Ooo! Ooooo! _Yeah_ , _Right theeere_! Ahhhh!"

He massaged her deeply, moving firm but gently in slow soothing patterns targeted around the affected area and she cooed, "Ummm. Thank you, so much. It feels a lot better."

"I'm only here to serve you Milady! Maybe we can consider this to be my first installment in repaying you for all you have done for me lately."

"Ty, will you stop it with that repayment crap. You don't owe any of us.…,"

He didn't give her a chance to finish before twirling her around in his arms and then pulling her up into a firm kiss. It caught her completely off guard but she recovered quickly and put her hands to the sides of his face to pull him closer as she rolled her head, invigorated with the promise for more.

It took a long while for the rush of the kiss to subside. Ty pulled away slowly, close enough that she could feel his warm breath on her lips when he asked, "So what is it that you wanted me to see, exactly?"

Amy raised her gaze to his green allure and responded, "I suppose I was hoping I could use this place to show you how I still feel about us."

' _What is she up to?_ ' and he asked, "This place? How so?"

Amy turned and took in the landscape illuminated by a brilliant quarter moon that appeared to anchor what must have been millions of stars scattered like diamonds across the night sky, "You see how neglected the old course is now?"

"Yes, I do. It makes me sad to see it like this. I was proud of the way it looked when I finished it. It was beautiful. I thought so anyway."

"It _was_ beautiful. I still come here sometimes when I want to be alone to think about things. I was here a while back looking at the way this place is now and it occurred to me just how closely this field symbolizes how I feel about my life and how it has turned out. You see, this was just an ordinary place with no real purpose until you came along and turned it into something beautiful. You made it into such a special place for me. It was a new beginning. It played a big part in helping me get over losing Mom and facing the fears I had about going on without her. It brought us together as more than just friends, enough so that it tied you and me together forever no matter how far apart we've become. We've made some of the biggest decisions about our lives here and some of my best memories happened right here, in this very spot. We made it our own special place, remember?"

"Of course, I do, Amy," he sounded surprised that she would even question that. "It meant just as much to me as it did to you. Don't forget, I knew I was risking the wrath of Jack Bartlett to build it for you, just to get your attention."

She shouldered a playful nudge and continued, "That was a pretty brave thing you did, even if it was a bonehead move to risk giving Grandpa a reason to…,"

"To put a boot up my ass so hard I'd be crappin' in Montana!"

His recitation brought them both to laughter and Amy squeezed his hand that had slipped around her waist from behind. "But, look at it now. No one has been taking care of it and as you can see, it needs a lot of love if it is ever going to be like it once was."

"I get the metaphor, Amy, but why don't you just say what's on your mind. It's OK, I'm ready to listen."

Amy feared her churning stomach might force her to apologize for tossing its contents into the grass beside the truck, but after taking in a few deep breaths to pump up her courage, she felt like it was finally time to lay it all on the line again, one last time, "You know I have told you that I am sorry for what happened in Europe when you came to see me. What you don't know is that I have regretted sending you away from the very second I did it. It's true that others were telling me I did the right thing, that my relationship with you was only holding me back from some uppity destiny, but I knew in my heart that I had made a terrible mistake. It wasn't your fault, the disagreement we had, and I knew it immediately. They convinced me that I was boxed in between losing what I thought would be my only shot at making a big name for myself and watching you drive away in that cab," she swallowed to moisten her dry throat. "I knew in my heart that I was wrong but I was too stubborn to back down. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into with Ahmed. I had never met anyone who had it in themselves to hurt people so selfishly and put the people they supposedly care about through such a miserable and deceptive time to meet their own ends."

"You couldn't have known how messed up Ahmed was back then. None of us did. Do you think Jack or your Dad would have let you go if they thought you would have been in any danger? No, they wouldn't, any more than I would have. I should have been the one to protect you, Amy. I was your fiancé, you were going to be my wife and I wasn't smart enough to know what to do."

It felt like a huge breakthrough to Amy to have him accept what she was trying to say and it heartened her to go further, "Ty, one of the most important things I've learned through all of this is that there is a difference between chasing a dream and chasing grand illusions of something that was never meant to be. I knew there would be a price for chasing a dream as big as mine was. I thought, _'You can't have something that big without earning it'_ , right? But it was never supposed to cost me everything that really mattered to have it and it didn't take long for me to realize that nothing is worth that high of a price, nothing except doing whatever it takes to be with the people you love."

"What makes you think your dream is over? There are obviously people out there who still believe you are the best at what you do and want to pay you the big bucks to get you to come and work for them."

"You mean, people like Win?" sensing one last doubt still too fresh on his mind to dismiss.

"Yeah, for one, but if not Win, someone else will come along that wants to take you away from here and offer much more lucrative opportunities," a trace of bitterness tainting the words coming out of a last-ditch defense of his precariously vulnerable heart. "You are very good, maybe even the best at what you do, Amy, why waste a gift like that by hanging around Hudson?"

Amy shook off the opposition and rejected the anxiety threatening to take away her courage, "You may not see it like I have learned to do, but guys like Win have a problem they can never overcome."

Unable to hold back the dare in his heart, Ty exposed the remnant of his doubt, "Money, good looks, charisma…, the promise of a better life, what could he not overcome with an arsenal like that?"

She did not hesitate, her reaction was sharp, "BECAUSE HE, NOR ANYONE LIKE HIM, WILL EVER BE YOU!"

 _To be continued_


	64. Chapter 64

CHAPTER 64

Ty was expecting to have to sort out old wounds with Amy one day soon but she had caught him off balance from leaning into his anger and pulled the rug right out from under him. "Wh-What did you just say?" wanting to be sure he understood what she had meant by her comment.

Instead of answering right away she wanted to slow things down a bit, then an idea popped into her head, "Our old quilt is behind the seat. I cleaned it last week in case we might need it sometime. So, whaddaya say we get it and take a walk? We can find a nice place to relax and talk some more."

"You planned this?"

"I wouldn't say I _planned_ it, but I _did_ have this dream…, about us being here…, and…,"

"Sure," he agreed, and jumped off the tailgate, reaching to catch Amy as she leaned into his grasp to join him in the grass. He opened the door and pushed the seatback forward. There it was, just like she had told him, and he pulled the quilt out and threw it over his shoulder.

Without thinking how unusual it now was, he extended an elbow for his walking partner to slip her arm inside of his and they set out for a trek into the darkness touring the course where they used to play, have their talks, and hide out from the always nearby family while they took advantage of what had turned out to be some memorable alone times together. "Where to?" he asked.

She only shrugged, smiled, and quipped, "We'll know when we find it."

They had made it past the remains of what used to be the first of a series of two foot jumps, the easier part of the course, and soon found the weathered bales that had once supported the highest jump, the symbolic place where their journey as a couple had officially begun.

"Here it is, the one I saw you and Spartan clear so easily that day."

"It looked so big then," she laughed and revealed a secret. "I never told you, or anybody else, but I had already made three circles around the ring and had swung wide of this jump every time before you and Grandpa came driving up. Soroya knew I was scared but she yelled, "You can do it, Amy!" and that's when I just went for it. I put Spartan right in the middle of the jump and figured it was now or never. As you saw, we made it! I was so happy that I didn't bust my butt in front of you and Grandpa that I was beside myself. That's when I waived, the minute I knew I had a new boyfriend."

"How did you know that? I had done everything I could to keep from crossing Jack's 'off-limits' zone after I had asked about the two babes the first day I got here," and he mimicked in the old cowboy's voice, _"You mean, my GRANDAUGHTERS? There is a line. You keep ten feet away from my granddaughters, at all times, or any part of you that crosses that line will be removed."_

"You said, _babes_? To _Grandpa_?"

"Yup, sure did!" and they busted out a full-on belly laugh at envisioning the protective old cowboy laying down the law to the new city kid learning the bunkhouse rules at Heartland Ranch.

"Wanna sit here?" Amy asked eagerly. "This will make a nice place to talk, don't you think?"

The former city boy was wise enough to give a few heavy thrusts from his boot to the dilapidated stack of hay to make sure they would not be surprised by a varmint who might have chosen to make a home out of the opportunity. Each of them took a side of the blanket and folded it once over before spreading it out on the second layer of bales that remained of the jump Ty had built for Amy some eight years earlier.

Amy patted the improvised loveseat to see if there were any lumps, "Feels OK to me," and sat upon the quilt shifting back and forth to smooth out a couple of imperfections before reclining against the highest layer. She patted the improvised seat beside her, "C'moooonnnn, you're not scared, are you?"

Ty watched her, amused at the established world class horse trainer, and laughed at her daring him like the seventeen year old thoroughbred who had taught him a few things about what it was to be loved as well. The small town horsey girl had clearly grown into a beautiful, professionally accomplished woman who had seen so much of the world, but here she was, still a country girl at heart, and he eagerly crawled up to the place she had reserved for her stargazing companion.

"It feels like a hundred years since we sat out here and did anything like this," he admitted. "Remember when we would just sit and watch the planes fly over and wonder where the people were all going?"

It was true, their lives had been turned upside down and thrown sideways since those simpler times, but Amy's reply was honest, "A lot has happened since then but this is still one of the coolest things I remember from our growing up days. I still love it out here…, and I'm still glad that it was you I got to share those times with."

Ty needed more of a foundation under his feet, "Do you?" he asked, trying to reach back in his own mind to recall the implied security of believing their future was cast and their worlds could never be separated by anything, or anyone. "So, tell me, how _did_ you feel back then? I mean, _really feel_?"

Amy adjusted her position, leaning into Ty's chest and cajoling him to putting his arms around her, "Well…," reaching back so many years and finding what she was missing, "I felt like…, there was no one else in the world but us. Even if it could only be for a short while, it was only the two of us out here on our own little secluded island and you holding me in your arms, making me tingle all over, making me feel as though I could do anything, that nothing was impossible and there was nothing at all to be afraid of? Like that," and tilted back just enough to see if he had gone back in time with her.

"Is that really the way you felt when we were together?"

"Of course, it is!" She slipped her hands around his which had rested interlaced together on her midriff outside her shirt. "I guess I can remember it so well because I'm feeling it again right now, all warm and tingly inside, safe and happiest when I'm right here with you, like this."

"That's enough? Just hanging out together watching stars and planes crisscrossing the sky and dreaming about things we can't ever have?"

"Ty, I don't need fame or a lot of money to feel like I have self-worth, I never did, I just let the sudden windfall of opportunities cloud what I thought was important. I understand that it might be hard for you to accept that I have decided to make Hudson my home after all the fancy places I have been to, but _this_ is where I am supposed to be. I know that it's true and I am quite happy with my decision to be here from now on."

"To be here in Hudson?" still projecting a tinge of cynicism.

"Hudson? Preferably, but more than that, to be close to you, _wherever_ that might be." She gave him a while to let that sink in, nuzzling her cheek into his chest, then continued, "But yes, hopefully here in Hudson, or close by. This is where I feel like I belong. I missed the foothills and seeing the mountains whenever I need inspiration, and travelling through miles and miles of prairies filled with yellow blooms of canola in the summer, or playing in the snow when it's cold. Those things are who I am…, but I know what I need more than anything else is to fill this void in my heart where the only person I was meant to be with used to be. You are the only one who ever saw me, the real me, and I miss having that with you. In fact, I need you more now than I ever did before."

"Are you sure, Amy, because…, if we were to back out of this now we can take our memories and try to find a way to move on, but Sammy…, she's something else altogether. We can't start this and then change our minds because we finally figure out once and for all that we let our emotions push us into making another mistake."

His words crushed her, "Mistake?" she choked back her disbelief and raised up to look him in the eyes, capable of only a frail whisper to ask, "Do you think we were a mistake?"

He saw it instantly, the hurt in her eyes drowning her happiness, "NO! Amy? Where did you get that idea?" He cupped her face in his hands and held her still, his thumbs gently wiping away the tears that had burst loose from insecurity ruling another threat to come between them.

"Having you come into my life when you did was probably the only thing that could have saved me. The way you challenged me to be a better person, to grow up and be the best man I could be, you made me look outside my self pity and rise above it. None of that would have ever happened if I hadn't met you. I may never have known what it meant to be loved like that. I haven't forgotten the way you made me feel about myself and the amazing freedom I got from finding out there was more to me than what all those social workers and frustrated foster parents had said. You gave that to me, Amy! You gave me something I could hold on to and be glad to be a part of."

"But…, after everything that has happened, how do you feel _now_? Do you resent me so much that you don't think we can get back to where we were?"

Seeing Amy like this had always drained him of harboring any harshness toward her. He knew her heart, both good and bad, just like she knew his, and right now there was nothing separating them from a newer level of understanding but one last hesitation. Ty leaned in and kissed her forehead, slowly, gently pecking around her cheek and eventually finding her lips where he sank into her softness, pulling her tight against his chest as he answered her worries the most honest way he knew how. "I think I know how we both still have feelings for one another, but it's about more than me this time, more than us. Sammy has been through waaay too much already and the last thing I want to do is to hurt her again. She is so fragile right now. You saw what it did to her today even if it was only a misunderstanding. She is getting attached to you, Amy, and thinking that you had ditched us to talk about some job with a stranger broke her heart. She misses her mom and she has started to count on you. I have to be sure that anyone I let into our lives knows that whatever comes of our relationship, Sammy is going to be a priority. Everything I have gone through, every lesson I have learned, and everything I have become will be for nothing if I let her down. I made a promise to her mother. I won't do that to Charlie _or_ to her daughter."

It hit hard, the indication that he was willing to give up just when so many of life's obstacles had been removed from their path to reconciliation, "Is…, is that what you want, to back out?"

"That's not what I meant. It's just that if there is a _we_ , that includes Sammy, too. She is just as important, no, she's _more_ important than either of us. It's barely been six months since I had to sit down with Clint and Margie to help them explain to her that her mother had to go live in heaven with her father and all her grandparents. It probably won't be that many years until I will be all she has left in this world. Clint and Margie are doing fine now but they are getting up there. I made a promise to Charlie that I would take care of her daughter. Amy, I can't fail them."

She had a choice to make, to either give up now and salvage what was left of a good friendship or to go for broke in rebuilding something more, "Spoken like a true parent, I would say," tugging reassuringly at his arm and acknowledging his loyalty to a higher purpose. "Ty, I _adore_ Sammy! I admire what you have been able to do with her so far. Watching you with her, the way you take care of her and the way she looks up to you, that's an amazing thing to see. I have loved spending time with both of you and, Ty, I have never felt this way before. I know she and I are just getting to know each other but I would never let her down intentionally. I'm not so starry-eyed to think there wouldn't be setbacks and surprises along the way but I am ready to do the best I can to make sure she can learn to always trust me and I want _so much_ to help her to trust in life again, too. I think we could be good at it, together."

Amy could see him processing her words and paused a moment to collect herself, praying that Ty recognized her resolve to commit to them. She waited until he his eyes eventually met with hers and said, "You know, I remember someone else making the same case a while back, fighting the odds to do something _'so unimaginable'_ as to take someone new into their lives, dedicating themselves to a whole new purpose than what they had planned before. Some people questioned his sanity and ability to live up to the commitment it would take to do it. They were wrong, and, well, those are the same things I am saying to you now that I want to be a part of, too. I am telling this to you from the bottom of my heart, Ty. I want more than anything to prove to you that I know what I want and that's you and Sammy accepting me as a part of your lives so we can take care of each other. We could make it work, I feel it in my bones, and unless you tell me that you don't want me to be a part of it I will keep trying to show you every single day from this moment on that I am serious about this."

"But, I've watched you with Katie and I never saw that kind of enthusiastic connection with kids."

"That's because Katie was _Lou's_ baby! I never was comfortable taking care of her when she was a baby because…, you've seen the lists, _'do this at this exact time and don't do that, ever!'_ Can you understand the hell there would have been to pay if Katie skinned a knee or got hurt in some way while I was watching her? It was bad enough if I let her get dirty. Imagine that, a kid on a ranch getting dirty! What a catastrophe! I couldn't enjoy most of the simplest things with Katie for fear of messing up and disappointing Lou and then feeling like total shit for being an incompetent aunt!"

"That's ridiculous, Amy. You shouldn't have let Lou get to you like that. You did fine when you let yourself enjoy Katie and forgot worry about it. You haven't seemed to be intimidated at all with her lately, or with Sammy either. So, what's changed?"

"Well, the kids are old enough now for me to know how to relate to them better and Lou has backed off from being such a helicopter mom. But with Sammy, I…, I don't know how to describe it. Charlie and I talked about it more than once. She seemed to understand what I told her, that when I watch and listen to Sammy it's almost like I am standing there watching myself as a little girl. I can _feel_ the way she hurts and I understand her anger and the things that scare her, and somehow, I just know what she needs. I get this incredible feeling when we make one of those connections and I know I have made things just a little bit better for her. She's so smart, Ty, and funny…, I understand that we won't ever have the kind of bond that goes back to the cradle like only a mother and daughter can share but I already feel like I have fallen in love with her. That's crazy, I know, but it's the way I feel. That's what you wanted, isn't it, for me to say what I honestly feel?"

"Yes, that _is_ what I said."

He sat appearing to be in one of his thoughtful moods. "We don't have to be in such a big rush, Amy. Like you told Sammy today, we're not going anywhere. We have plenty of time to sort all of this out and, if you are willing to be patient, to see where this can go...,"

Amy twisted around to face him. "It's a deal," she said, and kissed him on the cheek hardly able to conceal wanting to jump for joy in clearing another hurdle much larger than the one they rested on, a way to make things right between them again.

"How would you feel about just hanging out and watching the planes fly over, maybe even catching a shooting star?"

"Sounds awesome! I have a soft spot for shooting stars."

"You still believe in shooting stars?"

"Of course, I do." Amy laced her fingers into his hand which had wrapped around her shoulder, drawing her close and embracing her with soothing caresses like he had always done when he knew she needed comforted. Fond remembrances rushed into her mind taking her back to one of the happiest nights of her life and she gave the hand a squeeze before continuing, "I haven't forgotten how they can change things so quickly," the once-promised fiancée replied, referring to the night they were camped on the riverbank in the mountains and witnessed the magnificent Alberta sky light up with a surprising gift from the heavens as it streaked across the horizon, prompting his long overdue proposal. "When I'm next to you, holding hands like this…, I remember very well how I felt that night…." Her lips pinched back the tears that threatened to spoil their memory, her voice quivering in distress, "I will never forget the feeling of being so loved. My heart is beating twice as fast just thinking about it, just like it used to, because I want you to kiss me right now so bad I can't stand it, so, yeah, it feels exactly the same, to me at least."

Ty didn't need words to tell her how he felt, he never did, and he used his arm around her shoulders to pull her to face him. He used a finger to sweep the loose strand of hair behind her ear and let his palm caress her cheek as he moved in, ever so slightly hesitating, eliciting a response.

Amy tried to resist the impulse to throw caution to the wind but had already gathered the hair at the back of his neck, clenched fingers pulling him closer as she pressed her lips hard into his.

They took asylum in each other's warm embrace, a feeling they each feared could never be realized again without the first real love either of them had ever known, but here they were, drawn together by some mysterious force as if nature demanded it.

The kiss went on long enough to require the need for both to come up for air. Ty was notorious for taking his time with personal decisions and he put her words to the test in his mind. They were flirting with a brand-new relationship, one that could be disastrous if it were to fail, but he could not dismiss the woman he had been watching so closely of late and felt like he owed it to her to vindicate the possibilities she was suggesting. He had seen every side of Amy Fleming there was to see, everything from bullshit to broken hearts, from self-destructive arrogance to totally selfless love, "What do you want, Amy? I need to know."

She felt like it was finally time to address the obstacles they would surely face, "I know you have your doubts. That's understandable, but I want us to get past this more than anything."

She sat up and leaned her back into the third tier of bales. "In fairness to both of us, I think before we can realistically move forward…, I need to tell you some things you don't know."

"Amy, I…,"

"No, Ty, I know this is the last thing either of us want to be brought up again but you mean too much to me to let it go. I won't ever feel like all the bad things are in the past until you know the answers to every question you have about me if we are going to honestly be together. There will be all kinds of stories in print and rumors from the 'jet set' circles and from clueless people here at home about what happened over there, so I think it is only fair to both of us to get it all out in the open so you can know the truth and not have to take someone else's word as fact, or worse, let your imagination sour any chance for you to see me as who I really am now."

Ty's head spun in anguish brought on by the nightmares he had hoped to never relive again, enduring countless nights laying in his bed alone envisioning Amy living in the lap of luxury during her time in Europe, seeing her in the prince's arms…, in his bed.

"Amy, it's over now. There is nothing we can do about it except to move on."

"Yes, we need to move on," squeezing his hands tightly and shaking him to look at her to emphasize her urgency, "but first we need to come to terms with what has happened to us. I can't risk having something resurface, true of false, to cause you any more disappointment in me than you've already had. Your trust in me is the single most important thing to me right now. That goes for Sammy, too. Nothing else will ever be right again for me until I get it back. I need to know that you can forgive me and accept me as I am, embarrassed, broken, and regretting every second of what I put you through. I need to know that you can forgive me for all the right reasons, reasons that will stand up to people that take some sick satisfaction in seeing us hurt again."

As much as Ty hated the idea, he knew she was right, "OK, I told you to say it like it is," the muscles in his jaw rippling from the pressure of gritted teeth, "No sense in backing down now."

Her fingertips were white from the unconsciously intense grip on his hands. She inhaled deeply to impede the precarious feeling of teetering on the edge of a bottomless abyss if her words were not enough to convince him.

"First of all, let me start by reminding you that I love you more than anything. I always have, and I always will. That is one thing that is never going to change whether you can forgive me or not."

"You sure you want to do this?"

Amy nodded, took a breath, and began, "You said I couldn't have known that Ahmed was a threat to me, and a threat to us."

Her face drew a tortured frown and it took every ounce of courage she could muster before she found his piercing green hesitation staring impassively back toward her, bracing for what was to come, then she bitterly disclosed the beginning of their downfall, "He didn't fool Lou. She tried to warn me about Ahmed and I wouldn't listen."

To be continued


	65. Chapter 65

CHAPTER 65

Ty had been dreading where this conversation was destined to go but had grown weary in suppressing the inevitability of coming to terms with their past. He realized Amy needed to come to terms with a brokenness of her own as well and he knew she had been having a great deal of difficulty sorting out her life since their split. As much as his wounded pride wanted to retaliate, common sense told him there could never be a complete healing for either of them without getting everything out in the open. He wanted very much to give the woman who had meant so much to him a chance to find some peace with herself, to enable her to find a way to move forward instead of being shackled by guilt and regrets.

"I guess after living in New York City and trying to make a life for herself there, I'm sure Lou had her own reasons to be less easily fooled than the rest of us. Look, Amy, someone else's advice isn't always enough to convince us how to be more careful in avoiding life's hard lessons when we are chasing our own dreams. Ahmed's offer was an amazing opportunity that anyone in your profession would have had to consider. I admit that I was a little worried at the time because things weren't the greatest between us back then, but I loved you and I promised myself I would never stand in your way to take your career as far as you wanted to take it, if it's what you really wanted to do."

Amy was shocked that the man who had lost a big part of his future as he saw it at the time could bring himself to talk about the hypersensitive situation with so little contempt toward their broken relationship, or to her for choosing to take the chance without him. It was a huge breakthrough to have him earnestly considering what she was trying to say and it empowered her to go further, "Ty, the mistake was mine and it was a big one. I had no idea how unprepared I was to make a decision like the one I made to take that job. I was convinced it would all be about me and the horses. It never occurred to me that I could actually lose you because of it."

A disquieting uneasiness interrupted her for a moment and she shifted a bit to allow her to face him better, "I let Ahmed's argument get to me, that I was ready handle the pressure of a demanding position like he was offering and that you and everybody else should support me, that you would never deny me the opportunity to see how far my career could go, that you would never hold me back if…, if you really loved me."

The irony tasted bitter as she spoke in retrospect, "Funny that he would use your words, _'hold me back'_ or were those _his_ words, words he had planted in your mind to shame you into not fighting with me about taking his job and agreeing to my leaving with him for four months without you?"

"He _did_ say that to me, more than once now that I think about it. The sonofabitch probably had it in his mind to screw us over from the start!"

Amy dropped her chin to her chest and nodded, Ahmed's plan no longer a mystery, "I was naïve enough to believe nothing could ever come between you and me, no job, no outside influence of any kind…, that's how much I loved you, how much I believed in us. Sure, we had plenty of disagreements. We were young and still learning how to share our lives with someone else, someone who might see things differently at times, but we had always found a way to work things out, before...," sinking into another pit of regretful hindsight.

"That, we did," he agreed, seeking to lift her back up in understanding her need to continue, "even if we had to suffer through what we thought were some pretty rough scrape ups at the time."

Reaching for her most trusted friends' hand, the humbled cowgirl kept her chin down but her eyes rose to find his, "I thought that was the way it would be forever, you and me growing old together and taking on anything the world had to throw at us and somehow, always making everything work out. Then…, the world threw something at us that neither of us were ready for. Who would'a thought, the richest man any of us had ever met coming up with the crazy fantasy of my gaining fame and fortune by doing something I love to do anyway and continually upping the stakes with more and more incentives until I let his illusion get into my head that I could do it, that I would be alright on my own so far away from you and my family and still keep everything I had here at home just as it was, that I wouldn't be giving anything up, only gaining so much more than I dared to dream about before?"

The whirlwind of a concept seemed less romantic now, that a small-town cowgirl of a horse trainer could be 'discovered' by a global entrepreneur and be given the opportunity to compete against the best trainers in the world and show every important figure in international equestrian competition how talented she was.

The fact that she had succeeded in proving exceptional equestrian abilities to the toughest judges in her profession offered little gratification against the price she had paid for success. Then, choking down a taste of bitterness left over from the disruption she had allowed to come between them, she resumed with her assessment of the last two and a half years of their lives, "But it was never supposed to cost us everything that really mattered," she lamented. "We might have been OK except for my underestimating the challenges that distance and time can put on any relationship, but even worse than all that, how fast everything between us had changed. I can imagine how disappointed you all must have been with me for so easily distancing myself and neglecting to keep you all involved with where I was and what was going on with me while I travelled around…, and for my denial about the lengths a man in Ahmed's position would go to interfere with the personal lives of a small-town couple like us. I still can't believe how he could do some of the things he did to us. It took me far too long to swallow my pride and admit that I had made a terrible mistake and that he was really the man he turned out to be. It was too late for us when I realized that nothing is worth a price that high, nothing except doing whatever it takes to be with the people I really love. The damage had been done and I knew I had lost you…, and deservedly so. After that, nothing seemed to matter to me anymore."

The conversation paused as Ty's emotions settled out of the spin cycle they were in but he kept reaching for the courage to maintain a positive approach, "Sometimes we have to find out for ourselves the hard way, that even if it is in our nature to want to trust people, it doesn't always turn out to be the right choice. I've had more than my fair share of those kinds of experiences, too."

His reply was uplifting to Amy in that he remained open to discuss what had happened to them without exuding justifiably harsh resentment, something she would have expected from a younger version of the remarkable young man he had become. She was glad for Ty's patience to hear her out and for their talk to have have progressed as well as it had and was determined more than ever not to surrender to fear, not to hold anything back even if it meant being candid with laying it all out to him.

She began with the reasons she made the decision to accept Ahmed's offer to work with his team in Europe and progressed all the way through the weeks preceding Ty taking delivery of the package Ahmed had sent with intent of dealing a fateful blow to their already shaky relationship.

Daring to fill in the darkest areas of their time apart, Amy offered enough details to the man she had hurt so badly to try and make him see that she had suffered along with him in their ill-fated journey and had paid a high price on her side of the failure as well. She described having to endure relentless, excruciating pain caused by her accident at Hillhurst and how it would incapacitate her at times. She explained how the royal heir to one of the richest countries in the world avoided the implied promise of using his limitless connections to find the best surgical solutions available to treat her injuries and instead used his substantial influence to make it easy for him to provide his private doctor's ample supply of powerful pain medications as another device to control her, pushing her into an addiction that further compounded her vulnerability. She emphasized how scared and confused she had become, feeling alone and disowned by all her loved ones, a belief enhanced by Ahmed's constant suggestions and continuous supply of pain killers, and the bitterness that overcame her, somehow convincing herself she could take revenge against the twist of circumstances that had stripped her of her identity, stolen her most treasured dreams, and led to the impalpable details of the prince's devious seduction.

Moments of panic swept through Amy when she thought she may have gone too far, watching Ty struggle at times with visions her brutally honest disclosures must have brought to life in his mind, but relief surpassed her fears when she saw that he was determined to stay engaged with her account of their time apart, a good sign considering his propensity to withdraw when he had difficulty processing things that upset him.

There was a restlessness shifting in the darkness next to her and Amy wanted to carry on before either her courage ran out, or his understanding, and closed her eyes hoping for a miracle, one she knew she would need if they were going to survive where she was about to take him.

"I was tipsy from one of the most amazing meals I had ever experienced at one of the most popular restaurants in the city. I had been sipping wine all evening attempting to keep up with the experienced drinkers there and getting in way over my head. You know I would not have been drinking alcohol under normal circumstances but…, I was trying to move on from us. Seeing you with another woman, so beautiful and happy to be with you from what I could tell, was devastating to me. I was angry with the world because I had lost everything that mattered to me and felt that Ahmed might actually be the only option I had to get on with the rest of my life. I mean, we had a passion for the same things, the horses and competing, at least, and I decided I was tired of feeling so bad about myself and always being on the losing end of things. I was miserable and needed something good to happen for a change and Ahmed had worked very hard to get me to believe it would be through him."

Amy put the missing pieces of the puzzle together, carefully filling in enough details of what had become her life so far removed from an unassuming upbringing in Alberta in hopes of helping Ty see why she had come to the choices she made, right or wrong, and the way she felt about herself after finally giving in to Ahmed's persistent advances on the one and only night they were together like that, the night her world caved in around her and she began to realize that she was going down a road without a destination, and with no return.

Ty had taken all he could fathom of her account of their time apart and pushed away far enough to slip out from behind her and distance himself a few steps into the darkness. He stood with his back toward the woman laying bare all her darkest secrets and fought the urge to walk away in anger, something he would have done in another time at much less provocation.

Amy made her way to the edge of the stack and slid down to the grassy field. She needed to keep him as close as she dared knowing his admirably higher limit for facing emotional distress had been met. She tested his reaction by caressing the tensed muscle in his shoulders to see if there was still room enough in his heart for her to be near him, "Ty, I'm so sorry. I wish I could take it all back, but we need to get through this, _please_? For both of us? For Sammy, too."

The scope of this conversation had surely been a measure of the young man's mettle but he found it in himself to straighten up and look his once absolute partner in the eye, "I _know_ …," more punitive in tone than he intended. Ty immediately regretted his harshness and could not let the first true love he had known think he would let her relive such a horrible nightmare alone, "Amy, I know. I'm sorry you felt so isolated from us..., from _me_. I just don't understand how we could grow so far apart like we did, and so fast? I would have found a way to get you out of there if I had known. I _know_ I would have."

Although Ty did his best to put on an understanding air, torment was obvious in his temples as they pulsed under the strain of a tightly knitted jaw. She believed him, that he would have found a way to save her had she not dismissed the possibility, and it hurt Amy deeply to see it in his searching eyes, how her words had affected the man she loved more than anyone else. She reached for his face, gently stroking the intensity of his restraint, hoping to get him calmed enough to hear out the rest of her appeal and not to shut her out of his life, and Sammy's.

"I know you would have, Ty, if I hadn't made it so impossible for you to care about me and what I had gotten myself into."

Ty inhaled long and deep, his shoulders slumping in surrender. When she sensed she might have him back enough to continue, Amy described a much more demanding employer, erratically aggressive with pushing an increasingly unclear agenda and his dismissal of her resistance to his far-fetched proposals. She knew she was in trouble and had no idea who she could turn to escape an ominous future subjected to the control of a man who was not accustomed to being denied anything he wanted. She had already seen him totally disregard the cost of his compulsions and knew he had no fear of repercussions from local authorities.

The account of her story had affected Ty, for better or worse she hadn't yet determined. It was admittedly a lot for him to take in and he was pensively quiet. It worried her but she retained the slightest glimmer of hope in that he was still here with her and hadn't yet pushed her away.

The conclusion would be details of the most difficult part of her journey, parts of it so private that she intended to tell absolutely no one. Amy would have to come face to face with the truth that had landed her in a Barcelona emergency room fighting for her life and share it with the one person who used to see nothing but the best in her, the one who would never have thought she could fall to the lowest imaginable chasm after the sudden and unexpected transferal to the Royal Villa in Spain and the attack in the barn setting in motion an incredible turn of events that would change her life forever and ultimately alter the face of an entire nation.

Amy's stomach churned as she depicted her former employer likely intending to punish her from the outset if she continued to resist his proposition for her to oversee his new villa in Barcelona under the terms he had laid out. She struggled with dread and forced herself into sharing vague memories of the day she knew for sure that she was in serious trouble, having to cope under the influence of a new medication her host had given her shortly before their ill-fated confrontation in the barn, and having their argument suddenly ignite into a volatile life or death situation after she flatly rejected his plan, an unexpected ally being the only thing saving her from becoming one more missing person added to a list of unfortunate casualties related to the prince.

"Ahmed had every intention of taking advantage of my being so out of it right there in that stall. I tried to fight back but when it came down to it I was too woozy from the capsule I had taken to offer a serious resistance. He would have made an example out of me and his people would have disposed of what was left of me like the authorities have discovered he had done with several of his other victims."

"Several others?"

Ty stared into the vague shapes of sagging poles and tattered bales scattered around the surrounding field as Amy divulged details of the investigation brought on by her escape from the villa and the suspicions that had later proven to be factual, an unbelievable saga of deceit and betrayal fit for a feature film. He listened to her paying a debt of gratitude to the San Nicolas family for saving her life and offering the help she so desperately needed when she was in her most vulnerable state. They were the difference in never being heard from again and making it home to Alberta even if it was only to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and make the most of what was left of it.

Agitated and even more restless, Ty fidgeted uncomfortably foot to foot from the urge to walk, but needing more to stay.

Amy knew it was his nature, "Fight or flight," as her old family friend, Sally Bell, had described him once, and reached out to his tensed forearms and slid her hands down to find two angry fists clinched tightly in her grasp. Was he battling to resist striking out against the ghost of a man who had altered their lives so dramatically, or at _her_ for putting them both in this position?

There was no option other than to stand her ground and take whatever happened next as it came. Amy considered the agony in his eyes, imploring to match his anger with her own hope and prove her need for forgiveness.

Sensing Amy's weakening grip as she struggled to hold on, Ty realized the spent woman had used every ounce of inner strength to tell her story. The pleading in her wearied eyes diluted his anger but a new repulsion grew inside him as he considered the inconceivable audacity of a single man turning his fiancée's dreams into the nightmare that nearly destroyed them both, wishing to God that he could have gotten his shot at Ahmed for the unspeakable things he had put them through before the sonofabitch had met his fate at someone else's hand.

Ty composed himself enough to remember Amy's tender nature, besieged with embarrassment, remorse, and being on the verge of breaking in two at waiting to see if he was still with her or already lost.

She could not look at him, she was barely breathing, and the normally soft-spoken man wished he had something profound to say to the woman who was shrinking into the fringes of depression from exposing rueful secrets known in entirety only by Amy and him, but recognized the trust and courage it had taken for her to share these things with only him and decided that sometimes saying less is the best answer because he was sure there would be more to come.

The deep compassion that stirred for his once perceived soul mate compelled him to pull the uncharacteristically fragile woman into his arms, assuring her that she was not alone anymore, "It must have been hard for you, going through something like that in a strange place and being so unsure of everything, being so far away from the people who love you."

Nodding nervously before she continued, "I need to sit. Sit with me?"

Ty assisted the shaky woman onto the quilt draped over the stack of bales and when she was comfortable, sat beside her. Amy pushed to purge the darkest corners of her shame in hopes that it would be the beginning of a true healing they would require if being together again was to be a reality once he knew all the facts.

"The first surgery that night in Barcelona saved my life. I wouldn't have made it to the next morning without it. When I woke up two days later I couldn't talk. Ty, I couldn't call Grandpa or Lisa by name for a week. I didn't know who they were. I couldn't walk at first, I couldn't even get myself into the bathroom. There was a mirror beside the bed and I spent hours staring at the stranger looking back at me thinking, _'Who are you?'_ I looked hideous, like Frankenstein. There were big red and purple scars all over my scalp with no hair left to hide it. It took three weeks before it was safe for me to travel and when the doctors finally said it was OK to leave the hospital Grandpa and Lisa took me to France to stay at her villa. I had to start therapy as soon as possible to regain enough strength to move forward with the healing process. They found the best doctors in Europe to help me continue the treatments and when I got strong enough they did the other surgeries I needed, one after another. I understood that those surgeries were necessary but they proved to be even more devastating than the first one when it began to look like I might not make a full recovery."

Hearing Amy's account of a laborious recuperation made him want to comfort her and he moved backward against the upper row of bales, pulling her into his arms to rest against his chest and securing her tightly against a warmth that would make her feel steady and safe. "It may have been difficult, but I can certainly see that you got results somehow. Where'd you get these?" He squeezed her biceps, much more developed than they used to be, "and where did these come from?" gently stroking two fingers across the outline of ripples boasting a flat, well defined six-pack.

She squealed in surprise at being slightly ticklish and they shared a quiet laugh, a much-needed interruption of mood.

"I got these by going against my trainer's advice."

"There's a shock," mocking the Fleming trait of selective listening and suddenly changing the light in her eyes.

"Yeah, but when I was at my weakest at the beginning of my therapy my specialist said, _'I want you to do five sit-ups,'_ I did ten. When they asked me to do ten push-ups, I did twenty."

"Of course, you did."

"Laugh if you want to, but when they told me that I may never fully recover, I couldn't accept that. I had already lost too much to have to face being unable to physically do the things I used to do before the accident."

Something about the two of them being in each other's arms had always proven to be the best medicine either of them had ever found to cure what ailed them. Amy relaxed into Ty's chest and adjusted her head against his shoulder pondering whether she could share the part of her story left unsaid until now. She still wasn't sure she could ever share it with him or anyone who didn't already know but determined it would be better to let go of her pain in the arms of the man she loved more than anyone else, a friend she knew she could trust with her life. Ty was here for her when she needed him, like so many times before, and his perception of her would never be completely honest if she kept it from him. He needed to know why she was the person she had become. A lie of omission was still a lie, a tactic that had come back to haunt each of them numerous times before, so she continued, "Lisa has told me they never lost hope. She and Grandpa did everything they could think of to keep my mind occupied with positive thoughts but I kept slipping farther into this black hole of depression I had gotten myself into. I sat there in my room, day after day, trying to deal with what had happened to me and the reality of losing everything I used to think of as untouchable…, like you and me. There was never a day that I didn't think of you and hate myself more and more for allowing us to grow too far apart to fix things between us. It got worse after that. As low as I already was, I still remember the feeling that consumed me the day it sank in that for the first time since I met you, you weren't going to come to me when I needed you…, and would never come to me again. I knew right then that I wanted to die. _I wanted to die_ , Ty. I was so empty. I couldn't see any reason to go on. I didn't even want to try."

That was the all she had. Amy withered backward onto the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground and bowed her head, laboring to steady herself as she sobbed inconsolably at having to relive memories that she could scarcely conceive as being real. Hearing her own words out loud shocked even her and enforced the belief that Ty would now see her as damaged beyond acceptance and all hope would be lost. _'Now he knows everything. How could I blame him for rejecting me?'_

The admissions had awakened a self-loathing for allowing herself to make the decisions she had made. They would be a part of her life forever. There was no delete button or eraser that could remove that chapter from her life and now the bottom had fallen out of the only hope she had maintained to mend the hurt keeping them apart.

Ty held her by her shoulders and turned her around to face him, coaxed her chin upward with a gentle brush of his fingertip, and looked straight into the devastation of her tear-reddened eyes, "I told you once that I had lost you because I really thought I had. The girl I was looking at back then was not the same girl I fell in love with. Do you remember my saying that?"

Her face contorted from the memory, the exact moment their story as a couple had officially come to an end, and she sobbed again before he caught her face in his hands, "I told you if I ever saw the girl that I loved again that I would know it…, and I would still love her…, because…, that girl took a part of my heart that nobody else can ever have and it will always be hers to keep, no matter what."

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief, tears blurring the silhouette of a starlit angel wrapping his strong arms around her, helping her to hold on to the real dream she thought had escaped her grasp for a second time. _'How could he be so gentle? How could anyone be crazy enough to avoid turning away in disgust after everything I have told him?'_

There would never be a day that Ty Borden could tolerate seeing the woman he had loved so completely fall into this kind of despair. He knew she had told him the things she shared out of love and the kind of honesty that could most likely have kept them together if they had committed to be this open with each other in the first place. Together they were stronger, the very thing that had made them better than either of them would have been had they not fallen in love, and he spoke from his heart, "It was true then, you _had_ changed, so had I, but I've realized for a while now that I have been seeing the girl I fell in love with again. You are the person I grew up with, someone I can trust now and someone I have become increasingly indebted to for all you have done for me and the people I care about. Look, Amy, we have both learned a few hard lessons but we are both smarter for it because we understand how easily the things we cherish the most can disappear if we're not careful. Yeah, things have changed. We have another part of our lives that didn't used to be there since I have Sammy with me now, but…, I still believe in you..., and me. I still believe in us."

"Wh-why…, how could you forgive me after hearing everything I've just told you? Those kinds of things don't happen to good people."

"That is not true, Amy. We all have to grow up and face hard times head on. Setbacks happen to everybody whether from bad decisions or nothing more than bad luck and they should make us smarter and more grounded because of them. That's what we stand to gain from them. I think we both did that. Each of us has had to take a long, hard look at ourselves to see what we are really made of and made the best of it, to find out what we want out of life and be happy with what we have found. I believe we are ready to put the past behind us and get on with the rest of our lives now and make the most of a new opportunity to start over. I'd like to think we are big enough to move on, together. No secrets, no holding back, all in, you and me."

Sent reeling once more by the man who could still amaze her even when she was sure there could be nothing else left to discover about him, Amy surrounded Ty's neck with cautious arms, persuading the love of her life into a gentle kiss that lingered until the embers of relief grew into something more, the kind of kiss that takes more breath than you have, a fire in the belly consuming fear and restraint and replacing it with a wild abandon, and when she finally had to come up for air, "I need for you to feel that way. I feel it too. I need you. I need you so much."

To be continued


	66. Chapter 66

CHAPTER 66

Clint orbited the new 4x4 Dodge for the second time and stopped to peruse the window sticker, "This one's got about everything exceptin' a butt scratcher…., oh, wait! Here it is, right here!"

"Gramps!" Sammy scolded the ornery old cowboy, a bit short on social etiquette at times, then turned to her dad, "He said butt, in front of _everybody_!" the only stranger being the annoyingly effervescent salesman who had been shadowing the crafty old business man, then giggled when Ty tried not to smile but did anyway.

"Whaddaya think, Clint," the keen negotiator nudged the sale along, noticing the intimidating scowl, "er, umm, Mr. McCrary? You'd look like a million bucks driving down the road in fine a fine piece of machinery like this one."

"If I'da wanted to look like a million bucks while riding down the road in a damn truck, I'da been lookin' at a _green_ one."

The salesman swallowed his tongue and turned a brighter shade of red while Ty had to turn away altogether. _'And I thought Jack was bad!'_ smiling down at his smaller shopping buddy and hoping she didn't start cackling out loud.

"Well, Sam is this the one?" Ty asked.

"I don't know, Dad, maybe we need to look at a _greeeen_ one first," unable to contain a girlish giggle.

' _And she's seven?'_ Ty mused, _'I guess you have to be born with it. God help us when she's ten!'_ and figured the salesman had come to realize he had been out matched by the oldest and youngest double-team he would likely ever go up against.

"I like this one over here. It's blue, like Amy's. Can we get it?" she asked.

"If we get one the same color as hers we won't be able to tell which one is ours when it's time to leave." Ty still couldn't believe this was happening, "How about this gold one? It looks like it would be easier to keep clean."

"Probably right about that, Ty. People won't know how hard you're workin', drivin' around in a nice clean truck all the time."

"You sure about this, Clint?"

"Margie laid down the law on this, Ty. You gonna be the one to disappoint her?"

"No, no, I guess not, but…,"

"We talked about it already, how it's gonna work. Ain't any outright gift or act of charity, you'll have your part in it, too, so just enjoy it for once?"

The idea of having someone in his life to help make some of the challenges easier was still taking some getting used to. Ty knew Clint and Margie were right. It would be necessary to have safe, reliable transportation, not only for driving Sammy and her friends around but to make sure he could keep up with a busy schedule of his own and not have to worry about a less reliable older vehicle leaving them stranded on the side of the road from time to time. Then, there was the crash. What if Sammy had been with him when he tumbled down into that ravine? It was food for thought. "OK, OK! Sammy, this is this the one?"

"Yeah!"

Clint looked over his shoulder to the salesman who had been earning his potential commission enhancement, "You heard the little lady, write 'er up!"

* * *

After their business at the dealership was finished, Clint left to go into town and follow through with some personal errands as per Margie's list in his pocket and left Ty and Sammy to their own imagination as to spending a beautiful summer afternoon together getting to know their new truck. Taking the luxury of the long way home was something Ty had come to miss from being so busy and trying to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time possible. Some of the old range roads around Hudson would make for a nice way for him to break in his new truck and give he and Sammy a little time to kill together, just the two of them.

They headed west on the Cowboy Trail and stopped at the General Store in Priddis where Ty knew they could get a couple of Yukon Vanilla and Almond ice cream cones and some Diet Coke chasers. "No need to tell your Gram about this, right Sam?"

Sammy loved to share little secrets between she and Ty. It was just another awesome part of having a dad that she was pretty sure would fetch the moon for her if she would ask him to.

A jog off the main highway found them on the Old Coalmine Road loop and eventually winding around the foothills on old country roads Sammy figured must have been made by goats. "Dad, are we lost?"

"I want to show you something you don't know about me," he assured the concerned navigator in the passenger seat.

Never one for patience, "What is it?"

"Hang on, you'll see."

" _Daaad!"_

After twisting around on one blacktop trail after another for ten more minutes Sammy was sure this had to be a mistake, "We're lost, aren't we?"

The driver laughed and said, "You don't think I can find my way around out here?"

"Nobody ever comes out here, I can tell by looking around. If anybody ever _did_ come out here I'll bet they are _still_ lost."

Cresting a hill heading west, a panoramic view of the Rockies opened through the trees. Ty pulled off the road through a crooked hanging gate and onto a gravel driveway that had an old camper trailer and a few ramshackle out buildings close by and stopped the truck.

"Do you know the people who live here?" she asked in horror.

"Well, nobody is living here right now, but I lived here for a few years while I was going to school to be a vet."

"You must have been really poor."

He was amused by his adopted daughter trying to imagine what it must have been like to live in such a place. "I was. But I made it just fine while I lived up here."

"How? I mean, did you even have a TV?"

"Didn't need one. I studied all the time anyway so I wouldn't have had time to watch it if I did."

"Man! That must have sucked."

"I wouldn't let Gram hear you say that if I were you."

"She says worse stuff all the time."

"Yeah, maybe so, but she's older and…,"

"Don't worry. I know better than to say bad things in front of her. She says it is unbecoming of a lady."

"Listen to your Gram. She's really smart."

"What was it like, not having any money?"

What a concept! He had spent most of his life wondering what it would be like to not have to worry about where the next meal was coming from. Sammy had not.

"Well, if you never had any money your whole life, then, you didn't know any difference. I made it just fine, as you can see. Having money isn't the only thing that makes people happy."

"Maybe so, but not having it sure wouldn't do much for 'em either."

His neck snapped around because he just had to look at the pint-sized philosopher, her arms folded across her chest and a matter of fact set to her jaw. ' _A chip off the old block.'_ He had to stifle a chuckle. She was Charlie McCrary's daughter made over and sometimes he could see the child as a carbon copy reboot of the quick-witted cowgirl at the age of seven.

"Look at that view, Sam. Do you know how lucky we are to live in this part of the world? People with a lot of money pay big bucks for a view like this and I had it all to myself, so I think I did pretty good."

"Did your friends know where you lived? I'll bet the girls just _luuuved_ it when you showed it to them. You didn't have a _girlfriend_ , did you?"

' _If she only knew'_ and thought she would have to wait a while before she heard the rest of the story.

"It's really pretty, Dad, but Amy's waiting for us."

"Huh?"

" _My-new-job!_ It's supposed to start this weekend. You forgot, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah! When is it we are supposed to get you over to Heartland again?"

"Like, nooow…,?"

"Oh!…, Sorry! I guess I forgot with all that's going on today. We'd better go by home to pick up your clothes and get you over there, then. Wouldn't want to give your boss a bad impression and show up late for your first day on the new job, would we?"

* * *

"Ooooo! Look at you two!"

Lou walked around the spanking new 4x4 and nodded in appreciation of her "little brother's' new ride. "It's about time! Now if we could just get Grandpa to see the benefits of modern transportation…,"

"Yeah, like that's ever going to happen," scoffing at the unrealistic argument toward ordinary thinking.

"Hey, Sammy! I guess you're here for your first day as a trainer's helper, huh?"

"Yup! I'd better let Amy know I'm here."

"Hey!" Amy walked out of the barn with her youngest niece following closely behind. "Wow! That's a nice truck for a _city_ boy!" a throwback jab to the first time she saw him drive up to the barn at Heartland Ranch having never seen a real farm before.

"I got your city boy, right here!" diving for the hose used to fill up the horses' water tank, no stranger to break out water fights from these two, and squeezed his thumb across the opening to fan a quick spray across the retreating pair of mockers.

"OK, OK, You're not so much of a city boy anymore!" Amy squealed, taking off her hat and shaking the excess water away. "So, Sam, you ready to get to it?"

"Yeah! What do I have to do first?"

"You mustn't look at it like you _have_ to do chores, Sammy. Think of it more like, _'What do I get to do first?'_ Sooo, let's get your boots and coveralls on and then we can water the horses, _which was going nicely until your dad made a mess of it_ , then we get to feed them! Let's get started!"

Ty stood with Lou watched Amy, Katie, and Sammy disappear into the barn, leaving the two of them to talk. "She's planning on using reverse psychology on that kid?" and kept a chuckle to himself.

Lou noticed it and said, "I subscribe to a website that offers quotes everyday to think about and just this morning there was one that said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

He nodded slowly, pondering the logic, and puckered his lips, "Maybe so, but I hope she ate her Wheaties for breakfast." Then, it hit him, "Oh, sh—oot! I forgot to bring her coveralls!"

"Amy poked her head around the barn's door and brushed him off with a wave, "Don't sweat it, _Daaad_ , I got ya covered. You can bring her things by later, and I heard that, by the way," flashing the _'Don't think I'm forgetting it, Buddy,'_ smile, and ducked out of sight just as quickly as she had appeared.

"What's she talking about, _got me covered_?"

"She got the girls matching pink and purple coveralls, boots, kid's gloves, and who knows what else to get them into the spirit of things," Lou explained.

Taken a bit by surprise, Ty commented, "Boy, she's taking this deal with her helpers pretty seriously."

"Amy's been looking forward to this, so let her have her fun. Do you have time for a nice big glass of sun tea? I have a fresh batch of banana-nut muffins just now coming out of the oven, too, if you're interested. If I remember right, you had a soft spot for those. We could sit on the porch and talk before you have to go."

"Sure, I'll _make_ time for fresh muffins."

Lou put a plate full of steaming treats beside Ty on the sitting bench beneath the kitchen window and sat down beside him. She smiled as he stuffed a big bite into his mouth and chewed it like he did when he had to grab a snack on the fly because of her grandfather keeping him hopping from one chore to the next with barely enough time to refuel. "I see you still appreciate my baking skills."

"Sorry, but yeah, these are damn good muffins, Lou. I miss when you made them for me once in a while."

"I miss seeing you stuff your face with them," laughing at how Ty never had shown any restraint when she made one of his favorite dishes. "So, how are things going at the clinic?"

"We have been slammed, but Scott and I have decided we need someone else to help out with paperwork and chores with the animals and such. Neither one of us care much for shuffling paperwork or cleaning out cages after a long day of vaccinating several hundred head of cattle."

"Do you have anyone in mind?" she asked.

"Not yet. We have interviewed a few people but haven't found anyone who seems interested in the kind of job we have to offer."

"Do you think that Georgie could do it?"

"She would be great, if she's interested in that kind of thing."

"She is motivated to find something for some extra pocket money. She's already thinking about a car and Peter and I have told her we will help her get a decent car to drive but that she has to pay her own expenses, like insurance and gas. You already know how she feels about all the animals."

"Tell her to come talk to us." I think Scott would agree to it if Georgie seems serious about it."

"Great! She will be sooo excited!"

"How are things between you and Peter these days?" he asked. "Are you still getting along OK?"

"To tell the truth, it can be pretty hard at times. We still care for each other, but we also know that we have two very different views of what it is to be happy. He hated it here on the ranch, I hated it in Vancouver, it just wasn't ever going to work."

"I'm sorry, Lou. I know how hard it is to have to change the way you had your future planned out."

"We'll be OK. He still loves the kids and wants to spend all the time he can with them, but it's hard to juggle our different schedules around so everybody gets a fair shot."

Lou took a minute to reflect, then set in on her actual goal, "Tell me, how are Clint and Margie getting along? From what I can see, you all get along very well."

"It's been really great that we all have each other. They are the best, Lou. I don't think they could take any better care of me if I were their own."

"Yeah, well, you have that effect on people," reaching out to pat the back of his hand. "We are all proud of what you have done with your career and, _Sammy_? It is sooo adorable to see you two together. She loves you so much and I am glad you have each other now. I know how hard it is to have the time to take care of business and family all at once. I couldn't do it if it wasn't for Grandpa and Lisa, and Amy has really made a big difference since she has come back home."

"Do you think she is happy, staying around here? I mean, someone like her has a lot of options and…,"

"Ty, Amy is happier than I have ever seen her. She seems to finally have things figured out. Not to say that she doesn't have plans for the ranch and her business, but she is taking time to enjoy the little things more, like taking the girls on rides every chance they get and crazy things, like doing chores. Look at them. They don't even know they are doing actual work when they are together like that."

Ty watched Amy explaining to Katie and Sammy why it was important to always keep water in the tank, hay in the trough, and pointing here and there while instructing her young helpers.

Lou noticed his smile, "It's kinda neat, huh, seeing her out there making every day chores fun and giving the girls their first real sense of responsibility past picking up their toys. They are growing up so fast."

"She does seem happier. I've noticed it, too."

"It's no small part to you that she feels that way. She told me a little about your talk. I doubt she told me _everything…_ , but enough to know that it meant a lot to her to have you hear her out. It means the world to her to have you still coming around, you know?"

"Yeah? Well, I'm glad to have her back, too, being able to talk about things, I mean."

"Sooo, have you thought about asking her out again, on a date, date?"

Ty had a tell, his jaw rotating in a pondering twist when he was thinking, "Sure, I've thought about it. I just wanted to see how things went for a while before I said anything to her about it."

"I think she's ready. Are you?"

"Maybe. I'd be cool with it, but how are you so sure she would be?"

"Oh, I don't know. It could be that every time you are supposed to bring Sammy over I've noticed she starts to fidget and sneaks a look up the driveway every few seconds to see if she can see you coming, or the way she stops what she is doing and watches you when you leave. I've noticed the way her eyes light up when she gets a text from our favorite vet. Aannnd, there are probably other reasons, too, like maybe the beautiful dress she just bought the other day. It looked like something one might wear to a really special event, _liiike_ , the Movie in the Park coming up next weekend."

"I've heard those are nice," still working his tell.

Lou knew she had him going, "One way to find out, eh?" and smiled that smile she when a plan was coming together.

The barn was full of activity, Ty watching the older instructor with her two half sized pupils scurrying around making a game out of the tasks they were given, "Hey, looks like you have everything well in hand."

"I enjoy having Sammy, Ty. Thank you for letting her stay over 'till the weekend. We are all going to have a great time, I promise."

"I'll bet you will." Then, the familiar twist of his jaw caused Amy's heart so to skip a beat. "Would you be interested in checking out the Movie in the Park in town this weekend? I hear they are pretty cool."

Trying not to burst at the seams, Amy choked back a scream and answered as calmly as she could, "I'd love to," and it reminded him of the shy fifteen-year-old she had been when she first accepted his offer to get some burgers and a chocolate shake at Maggie's.

* * *

The week flew past, one call after another to various ranch locations around the foothills filling each day past normal working hours, and before he knew it the time had come to head out toward Heartland and pick up Amy for their first date in years.

"So, I washed 'er up to make sure you looked like you were taking this seriously," Clint said of the shining truck sitting in a puddle of wash water.

"Thanks, I would have done it already but I just haven't had time…,"

"Son, slow down and enjoy yourself for a change. Relax! Have a good time. You both deserve a nice night out on the town."

Realizing that Lou would have called her co-conspirator with the news, "So, you and Margie know the deal with Amy? You don't have a problem with it, right?"

"Of course not. Look, Ty, as hard as it is to think about, me and Margie have accepted that Charlie is gone and we all have to move on. I know things have been rocky between you and Amy before, but you gotta give her some credit. People change. She has worked hard to get restarted out there at Heartland and from what I understand her business has gotten off to a good start and she seems perfectly happy doing what she is doing. Don't you worry about me and Marg. We are fine with whatever you choose to do regarding Amy or any other lady you wish to spend time with, as long as it makes you happy. We trust your judgement, but I shouldn't have to tell you how much of a difference Amy has made for Sammy."

"Yeah, those two get along really well. I'm glad about that."

"Me, too. Now, go on and have some fun. You ain't forgot how to treat a lady have you, 'cause I could offer some pointers…,"

"No! That's OK. I want to get past the first date before I get my face slapped."

"Just sayin'."

Ty laughed at the old man as he grinned his million-dollar smile and winked, then headed back to the house with a spring in his step. _'You don't suppose they still? Nah! No way!'_

* * *

Ty knocked on the front door and heard Lou from inside, "What are you doing? Since when do you knock at _this_ door?"

"I, ugh, I just thought…,"

Jack offered his younger friend a seat at the kitchen table. "Don't let her get to you Ty, she's just havin' her fun."

"So, how was the trip to France. Your third time, right?"

"A regular world traveler these days," he grunted.

"Hey, Ty! It's so good to see you!" Lisa hurried up to him and pulled him into a big hug.

"Hey, Lisa. Did you have any trouble keeping Jack corralled on the trip?"

"Let's not talk about that now. Don't want to spoil the mood, do we?"

"Lis, I was not that bad!"

Lisa winked at the guest and smiled the, ' _you're kidding, right_?' smile and pulled up a chair. "So, Movie in the Park? That sounds sooo romantic, right Jack?"

"Yeah, it'd be great if it wasn't for the mosquitos and ants crawlin' up your ass…,"

"My husband, the helpless romantic that he is!"

Ty knew the routine, the grumpy old codger and his beautiful younger wife, so full of life and somehow hopelessly in love with the man she had picked out of all the available prospects around Hudson. It worked, somehow, and he admired them both for sticking to their commitment to each other through the early part of their relationship when it could have gone either way.

Ty and Jack shared a chuckle and turned to look toward the hallway when the door of Amy's room opened. She closed the door behind her and turned to take the opportunity to show off her new dress, a form fitting black stunner hemmed mid-thigh and laced in neutral patterns that matched her new dress boots. She walked slow enough to let him take in the transformation from dusty jeans, muddy boots, and sweaty baseball hat to the vision that obviously clogged his senses as he tried to find something appropriate to say, trying not to notice the development of her well-toned legs.

"Wow!" _'How lame could I be?'_ "I, uhhh, you look…,"

"She smiled at knowing her selection had proven to be effective and enjoyed throwing him a lifeline, "Thank you."

Lisa and Lou shared a look, _'Whooowee!'_ He was a gonner and they all knew it.

Lisa moved the moment along, more to save Ty from an awkward segue than anything else, "You two have a nice time. And, umm, we won't be waiting up," her sparkle apparent to her step granddaughter as she walked by.

Ty opened the door to his truck and couldn't take his eyes off the blond-haired beauty as she swept gracefully into the passenger's seat.

"I take it, you approve?"

"I'm so sorry, Amy! It's just…, you look…, I just wanted to say that you look beautiful this evening."

Amy's heart fluttered, the thought that she could still get to him made her tingle inside. It felt good.

* * *

The couple left the shiny new truck parked on the city square and walked among the venders set up along the sidewalk. They took their time as they perused the tables full of everything from homemade beef jerky to hand made First Nation's jewelry. A necklace caught Ty's eye and he asked the seller if he could see it. It was 14K Gold fashioned into a lone eagle feather adorned with red beads. "What does this represent?" he asked.

"The Elders tell us that carrying an eagle feather is a sacred act and that it comes along with great responsibilities since it is believed the power of a feather comes directly from the Thunderbirds; a person who is worthy of bearing an eagle feather must therefore acknowledge that he or she is recognized by the Thunder Grandfathers themselves as being able to use their formidable spirit powers. To be given a feather of Ogimaa Migizi or Mishoomis Giniw (Grandfather Golden Eagle) is therefore one of the greatest honors to receive, because it recognizes achievement and great acts or deeds."

"I'll take it, and if I may, place it on this beautiful lady who I believe has the spirit powers that you speak of."

Seeing what he was thinking, Amy tried to interrupt, "Ty, that's too much…,"

"I just want you to remember how much I appreciate all you have done for me and Sammy. Let this be a reminder of how much you mean to us."

Her lip quivered as he moved behind her and she fought to keep tears from streaking her carefully applied makeup. Amy lifted her long blond hair for him to have access to reach around her neck and fasten the chain. When he had finished the task, she turned to look at him, humble, stunned, and completely lost in love. She had always been shy about public displays of affection but nothing was the same anymore, there should never be any reason not to let Ty know when he had touched her heart and took his face in her hands and kissed him softly, "Thank you."

"A wise choice, sir," the old man said as he nodded his approval, "Wear it in good health and always let you spirit be your guide."

They took their time in making their way around the food court, the wonderful aroma of eclectic selections filling the evening air, and after samples of German Sausage, Asian noodles, and Tahitian vanilla ice cream, found a seat in front of the big screen hung from one of the sides of the gazebo in the park.

Old movies had a feel about them, a glimpse into the past and a flair for romance that few of the modern films seemed to deliver. Casablanca was the kind of movie that they may not have chosen on cable but the atmosphere of the event suited it perfectly. The aroma, the crowd, the nearness to someone special, it couldn't have been any better.

They settled into the movie holding hands, but as the evening chill set in Ty noticed Amy shiver and drew her into his chest and she nuzzled into him, warm and glowing with possibilities.

The credits were rolling when people began to stir and make their way out of the park and to their cars. Ty looked at his watch, "Wow! It's not even ten o'clock. Are you in a hurry to get home?"

"No! I mean, if it's OK with you, this has been such a wonderful evening, I'm really enjoying just getting to hang out and spend time with you."

"How about taking the truck up to Lookout Ridge and see if the view has changed since the last time we were up there?"

"Perfect, let's do it."

 _To be continued_


	67. Chapter 67

CHAPTER 67

The top of the ridge used to be one of their favorite hideouts. It was the first place they ever went to be alone as a couple on the night Amy later learned Ty had splurged his last $60 for a decent meal at "A River Ran," a few notches above their usual burgers and shakes, and for tickets to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." Lou told her years after the fact that she caught him surviving on only bread, muffins, and bottled water from her kitchen until his next paycheck from her grandpa and made his favorite meal, macaroni and cheese, because she felt sorry for him, knowing why he was running so lean.

Memories like those had caused her to think about that night often in the past few months, when their bumpy ride through teen infatuation turned the corner and became a journey that changed their lives forever, when Amy knew she was head over heels in love and that anything she had experienced with a boy before Ty Borden came along was only practice for the real thing.

Amy stroked the gold feather lightly through her finger tips, not yet used to the weight of it hanging around her neck, and tried to get past how he had caught her so far off guard with the gesture. It was too much, she still believed, but there would never be enough anyone could offer her to ever give it up.

Neither of the occupants in the brand-new truck were feeling especially talkative. They each had their own thoughts to sort through and it was proving to be too involved of a process to allow for idle conversation.

The twenty-minute drive was just long enough for the pensive cowgirl to relax and appreciate the way things were going on their first serious date in years, much better than her most ambitious imaginings would have dared to hope for. Nostalgia had freed a pensiveness that repainted pictures of a past she feared were lost to the ages. Fragments of missing pieces in her memory came back more often now, something the doctors had tried to reassure her may very well happen even though she had doubted them, fearing the worst of having to start over in her mid-twenties without having the foundation of failures and successes from her childhood to build upon.

Ty stopped the truck strategically angled with the tailgate aimed toward the vastness of The Kananaskis. There was only one way up the hill and if anyone were to intrude on their privacy they would have ample warning to get themselves together, a perfect setting for two kids learning about being in love.

Ty shut off the engine and turned the radio on low, just enough to set the atmosphere. "I brought our blanket. We could sit in the back, if you like."

"Let's go," she said, and was out the door before he could respond.

The blanket could tell some stories, if it could talk. It had been with them on most of their adventures into the private places lovers go and had been the difference between freezing after working up a sweat or sheltering them in many a warm, comforting afterglow.

They each took a side and spread the native-weave comforter across the bed of the new truck, the first time it had ever had anything inside it as far as he knew. They sat down, leaned against the metal backstop, and watched vague foggy illuminations on the trees in the valley below, red tail lights fading and reappearing again as far away travelers left town and wound their way home through the foothills.

Ty was the first to offer conversation, "It's just like I remember it up here. Nothing's changed at all."

"It's odd, when you think about it. Even with all that we've been through, here we are, just like we would have been when we were teenagers. No matter what has happened to us this place is exactly like it has always been, just waiting for us to come back and see it. It's so beautiful."

A few minutes had passed with neither of them interrupting a welcome solitude the ridge had to offer. The evening had been a huge success in putting a few of the planks back together on the bridge that that linked the two of them so many years ago, the one that had been so badly damaged when they separated. Amy lay with her head on Ty's shoulder, "Penny for your thoughts?"

He relaxed a bit and said, "I was just thinking about how patient you have been with Sammy, and with me. I'm sorry I took so long to ask you out. I just needed to take it slow to make sure things were more…, comfortable between us before I said anything."

"About what?"

"About how nice it is that things are going so well with you and me, and Sammy of course. I just don't want to mess this up."

She thought for only a second, and then replied, "No secrets, no holding back, all in, you and me," she repeated his words from the last in-depth conversation they had shared. "I have been thinking a lot about what you said, too. We knew those words were the key to a successful relationship before…, but we didn't _live_ by them. That's the way it's gotta be with us. Ty, we fell in love in the first place because we were such a good, natural fit together. We didn't have to have a reason, or a plan, we just did, and it was _sooo_ good for us as long as we believed in it and took care of the bond we had. Nobody can make a relationship like we had just _happen._ It's true that some couples can settle and learn to be comfortable with what they have together, but we have so much more than that, you and me, and I am not willing to settle for something less than I want, or need."

"And what would that be, exactly?"

"I want a to enjoy my family, my friends, and my work, and I want you and Sammy to be the biggest part of it."

"It doesn't stop, being a parent. Are you sure you can handle being responsible twenty-four seven for a child that expects the best from you all the time, even when you are not in the mood or too busy?"

"You mean like when you work so much that you don't have as much time to spend with your kid as you should?"

"Touché…, I had that one coming," he humbly admitted.

"Ty, I'm not trying to be critical, I'm just saying that none of us should have to expect do this alone, not when we have people who love us and would enjoy the chance to share the load."

"Are you really ready for this? All in?"

"After our talk, I am. I was afraid that once you heard everything I had to say you wouldn't want to even try, but here we are, up on this ridge and talking about things that we should be talking about. That's kind of the point I wanted to make with the things I told you before, that even when we have been through the worst of times together, we're still here, leaning on each other. That's what I want, Ty, the chance to do what we are good at and support each other, no matter what. What we have, it's not something you can just make up because we want it. If you haven't lost faith in me by now, after I have told you everything there is to know about me, then there really is hope. You should expect no less from me, and I would expect no less from you. I love you, I need you, and yes, I'm all in."

Ty appreciated how much the woman in his arms had grown in the past year. She was more straight forward and sure of her convictions, something he had always wished they would have been able to hold on to in their relationship. He believed he had proven the same of himself. No more "fight or flight," as she had put it earlier, and there was an enhanced connection between them now, a calming element that had sometimes been lacking before. They were better together this time, and he liked it.

"You were stunning tonight. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off that dress. I hope I didn't embarrass you because of stealing all those quick little looks."

He had never been so straight forward with a compliment about her appearance and it surprised her, "Thank you. I am glad you liked it."

"I liked it a lot, just like everyone else at the park. All the guys were looking, so were their dates. I think they were trying to figure out why on earth such a beautiful woman would show up at a nice event like that with someone like me?"

"Funny you should say that, because I caught several girls making eyes at you! I can't blame them, though. You were so handsome tonight…," and adjusted herself higher to peck a little kiss on his cheek.

He caught the flushed cheek woman before she could pull away, bringing her back for a less hasty taste of her lips. The kisses lingered one after another, each a little longer than the last, and soon they were consumed in each other's arms, rising into the enchantment that overtook them as neither wanted to break the spell.

Their old songs played on the radio until the world went silent around them, vanquishing everything except the mystical sanctuary of love within the all-encompassing stars.

Opening her eyes and her soul to the man she loved, Amy asked, "Would it be wrong…, for me to tell you that I want to make love to you…, right now?"

An alluring desire arose from the softness in Amy's eyes that Ty had not realized for more than two long years but he did not have any trouble finding it in the vastness of Alberta's heavens caught up in the reflection of her gaze as she waited for his reaction.

His fingertips were his answer, brushing softly across her temples, entwining the softness of loose curls into his hands. Her eyes closed as she took in his tenderness, waiting to feel his lips again, this time finding her with enough authority to tell her that he needed her every bit as much as she needed him, re-sealing a bond that may have been damaged, but never broken.

Their embrace was interrupted as Amy twirled around and pushed against his chest, urging him backward onto the backstop of blanket covered steel in their makeshift love nest.

When Ty had repositioned himself on the quilt, the girl he used to fantasize about as a seventeen-year-old ranch hand rejoined him by moving to straddle his lap, resting her weight on his thighs and pulling herself chest to chest with determined squeeze of well-conditioned forearms wrapped tightly around his neck, "I never stopped loving you, Ty. I've missed you every single day we've been apart. I need you." Capturing his face in her hands, "I need you more than I ever thought I could need anyone, or anything," asserting herself to take control of whatever was going to happen next and leaving no doubt whom she wanted to be with.

As the boy-in-the-loft ranch hand had become the beautiful horsey-girl's first lover, he had occasionally let his blossoming young partner take the lead in their budding relationship but he had never seen her anywhere near this aggressive. He liked it and let her know by cupping her firm bottom into his hands, a bold squeeze assuring her that he appreciated her enthusiasm, and buried his warm lips into the sensitive part of her neck knowing she would soon be throwing any remaining reservations aside and unleashing a passion reserved for only him.

A growing courage bolstering her assertiveness, Amy straightened up to reach for the top button on his shirt, flipping it open and proceeding to the next one, and then the next, until her hands brushed the open collar across his shoulders exposing his smooth, muscular chest to her touch.

"Amy, I don't have any protection. I never expected…,"

"It's OK, I take care of that myself now."

When surprise spread across his face, she responded, "I feel safer this way, but all we need to think about right now is that we're OK."

Her palms flattened against him, silky and decidedly adept at sliding upward across his chest and shoulders, relishing the feel of his tight biceps as she played against his warm skin, pushing him deeper onto the quilt.

After a few too many seconds of his laying under her coaxing without advancement, Amy felt the need to persuade him into moving things along by unsnapping the top button of her blouse and taking his idle hands in hers to put them to better use.

He took the cue and tended to the second button, making his way one at a time to the bottom and enjoying the reactive arch of her back as he slid his hands along her ribs and around her bare skin to locate the hook of her bra. The laced undergarment fell loose from her chest and he pulled the silky white collar at the front of her blouse and let it drape loosely at her shoulders, happy to assist her with disposing of the daringly designed push up and tossing it to the side.

Amy rocked up on her knees to offer her breasts to his mouth and he obliged by taking a plump areola into his lips and teasing the protruding flesh, gentle rakes of his teeth nibbling the nipple to erection. He sucked it harder, working her with his tongue and lips until her belly squirmed against him from the intensifying urge to be satisfied, then left it to start on the other one, just as ready as the first, and used the sensitive zones he had not forgotten to bring her up to needing more.

They kissed with a wild recklessness, as if each of them was hell bent to take revenge against whatever had caused them to lose what they had once savored as a couple. Amy used her advantage above him to lower her weight onto the bulge beneath his zipper, increasing his discomfort from being confined in all that fabric by provocatively stroking her desire against his straining erection.

The intensity of their playing grew until she couldn't wait any longer, groping impatiently between them to find the button at the waist of his jeans. The zipper of his ninety-dollar Ariat's posed no problem for the invigorated cowgirl and it was out of the way in a second. She had noticed the change in his attire, no longer wearing clearance rack Levi's that had always been the necessary standard she correctly assumed Charlie had put a stop to, and considering how easily the pants were to access, figured price wasn't the only reason for the upgrade. One swift movement set him free and she reached inside the opening to find the cause of his agony, securing a stirring grip around its middle through his boxers. A firm squeeze before going immediately through the slit and meeting him flesh to flesh, proceeding from where she had left off and easing into a few sensual strokes which got the response she expected.

Her eyes stayed riveted to the shadows between them as she watched his swollen head sway up and down in the moonlight in sync with the movement of her hand as she manipulated the length of his shaft. He was as capable as she'd remembered, a full three of her hands under the bourgeoning tip capped with the perfect fit to help her find her pleasure.

Amy had kept up the pleasurable coercion on her partner until a dabble of shiny pre-cum slid across the engorged head and trickled across the back of her fingers, instigating a harder squeeze to see if there was more where it came from.

The hunger Amy had for his love was overwhelming, remembering the way it felt to be loved so completely from beginning to end, and in the occasional case of mutual indulgence, beyond even that. She was consumed not only with the feel of his body but the way he caressed her, turning every inch of her goose bumped skin into an erogenous paradise that his fingers cultivated to the fullest, slipping up and down, around and across, turning her core into a molten eruption waiting to burst wide open.

Without warning, Amy rose astride of her prey, tucked her fingers under the hem of her silky dress, and began to shimmy it over her head until it was lying in the growing pile of clothes in the corner of their bed. She hesitated long enough to make sure she had his attention, writhing above him wearing nothing but the teeniest thong he had ever seen causing him a necessary readjustment underneath her to relieve the pressure of an unattended arousal. His eyes danced around her shape, lean but firmer than she had been the last time they were together, and he wanted to explore it to its full extent. He cupped her ass in his hands and pulled her within an inch of his face, breathing in her scent as he teased her by puckering his lips and directing a stream of hot breath between her legs.

Amy squirmed at the sensation but it was not enough to satisfy the urges pushing her to be so brazen as to raise her foot, slip her right leg across his shoulder, and take him by the back of his head.

Ty was dumbfounded, for a second, then got past his surprise by nudging her with the tip of his nose, swirling around the tips of flowering lips underneath her panties, pushing them aside and flicking the lips sprouting beyond her folds, begging to be caressed.

"Ugh…, mmmm." Amy cooed at his touch, intense anticipation of something more to come.

Her lips were already moist when he tasted her, drawing the womanly flesh into his warm mouth and sucking hard enough to make her whimper for more. He kept it up until her supporting leg buckled from the all-consuming pleasure and after helping her regain her balance, reached up to her waist to help her come to him.

Her lips met his with a vigor equal to nothing he had ever experienced, her kisses following the line of his jaw and tracing across his neck. He wasn't usually ticklish but her nibbling was more than he could take, squirming enough to cause her to stop and give him a devilish, conquering smile before she progressed to the next step she had in mind.

Warm lips kissed, nipped, and circled patches on his chest, slow and deliberately placed swirls of a probing tongue adding to the confusion of trying to anticipate how far she might go.

His imagination was scrambled by reality when her attentiveness crossed his bellybutton and kept on going, warm breath caressing his lower abdomen causing him to lay his head back from trying to process the intense pleasure she was inflicting to places she had only dallied with before.

He was so hard that it hurt, thinking to himself if she did anything more than she was already doing that he may just split at the seams from excess pressure building up in his beyond hard erection. His breath caught when her cheek bumped the fat, sensitive tip and when she grabbed his shaft with her hand he could not resist raising his head to see what she dared to do next.

Ty gritted his teeth, trying to suppress the groan that escaped anyway when Amy's warm breath flowed around his tip, playing in the moment before she slipped her lips around it, smiling around his fullness as she obviously enjoyed the effects he could not hide.

She was determined to make the most of going this far with her lover and worked him with her mouth and hands, cupping his sack in her palm and exploring various techniques to see what caused the desired reaction, and then pumped him more vigorously until she thought he might cum without her and stopped to look at his face, a satisfied smile curling at the corners of her lips when she was assured that what she had done so far had been appreciated.

Holding on as if deciding to try something new, Amy crawled above him once again and pondered one last piece of business to attend to. She hooked two fingers inside the small patch of cloth at the front her thong and pulled it aside, enough to give access to the towering pleasure waiting beneath her.

The seductress tried her best to take her time in lowering herself back down to be nearer to him but her mind and body were going in two separate directions, each fighting to satisfy their own overdue needs. Her belly slid downward along his chest as she leaned into him, stopping long enough for a reaffirming kiss before allowing her weight to rest upon him, this time feeling the hair of his thighs tickling the inside of hers.

The intensity of their intimacy was threatening to blow their encounter wide open. Amy slid away from his embrace and coaxed him into laying full on the makeshift bed and then swiveled her hips until the moist folds of her enlarged inner lips caressed his manhood. She could see her juices illuminated by the moonlight along his length as she massaged his erection under her body. The anticipation was making her weak as she disciplined herself to wait, savoring the moment she had been waiting so long to capture.

All Ty could make out was the exquisitely sculpted silhouette of her nakedness backlit between him and the quarter moon, Amy's soft hair swaying from side to side with every gentle movement as she tortured him, her head rolling sensuously to the slow rhythm she had fallen into.

He was lost in the feel of her warm body as he explored it, pushing firmly along her sides and caressing her breasts, instigating a temptingly seductive moan to vibrate from deep within her each time he pinched her nipples between his finger and thumb.

It was all he could do to keep from taking her, the urge to bury his hard shaft to the hilt inside her approaching too much for him to deny, but he was determined to let Amy make the decision when to move forward.

He wouldn't have to wait long. Amy's moans had evolved into more of a whimper as she kept pushing herself to hold back and he knew she was near the end of her self-control. A heavy inhale whooshed through her clenched teeth as she approached the verge of surrender, capturing his ready erection with a forceful thrust of her hand and arching her back to adjust herself, sliding the fully engorged head down the slick folds of her lips until he was poised at her opening.

Ty raised his head to watch her holding his shaft steady as she allowed herself to come lower, the flared crown of his rock-hard penis disappearing inside the flowering folds of her womanhood which consumed only the massive head of his erection before she stopped. He steadied her with his hands at her sides and felt her quiver at pleasure from the stretch as he spread her lips.

As she became comfortable with the penetration, Amy moved higher until the tip became visible, and then began another decent to consume two more inches before she stopped again. "Ummmmh," a cry escaped her as she reeled from the sensation of his head caressing the rippled G spot and her hair swished with the sudden toss of her head before she tried to raise herself up for another assault on his manhood.

Amy stretched her knees wider, lowering herself in slow, careful pushes until she felt him stroke her depth. He was completely hers, as close as two people can physically connect, and a quiver shook her from deep in her gut, something Ty had learned to expect when her body started to force her inhibitions to let go and demand complete release. "Hold still, I've got you," trusting that she remembered his solution to the condition.

A breathless, "Uhg-K," was all she could manage, and steadied herself the best she could with her hands dug into his chest while he held her from under at her ribs. Ty tightened his hips to tantalize her while he took over the work, then pulled almost all the way out, repeating the cycle until they had achieved a comfortable rhythm. He moved her up and down, daring to go a little deeper every few thrusts, until he was completely buried inside her again.

Amy had recovered some control and it inspired her to swirl her hips, a circular back and forth to match Ty's movement as he slowly stroked her from below. She found just the right sensation to set the culmination of her needs into motion, the tip smooth yet firm, sufficient to fill her most secret place to perfection and tantalize the release she desperately needed.

Ty's thrusts became more pronounced with the passing of every half minute and soon her gentle movements matched his tenacious thrusts. Their thighs smacked with each impact and her breasts jiggled from always going the opposite direction of her torso, and Ty becoming aware that he was thankful for being in such an isolated spot, sure that if anyone were to hear her cries of desperation for release that they would come running, thinking the woman was surely being murdered by some psycho killer.

His strong hands captured her thrashing ass and guided her depth onto him, and as if someone had yanked the rope on a wild bronc's gate, a wild flurry of motion triggered her body to explode into shockwaves of ecstatic convulsions, her torso knotting up so tightly he could see her abs ripple across her flat stomach as she writhed her way through the orgasm neither of them would ever forget. He felt her milking his stiff erection from the inside as Amy rode wave after wave of release, half crying, half laughing, and completely out of breath as she collapsed onto his chest.

Ty felt her stillness break into a shudder and reached for the quilt, pulling it around his spent lover because he knew that once they regained their senses the night air would be chilly against her sweat soaked skin. He held her tight for another minute as she fought through two more aftershocks brought on by unexpected movement.

Amy hadn't spoken a word, trying to come to grips with what had just happened, and Ty stroked his palms across her back, one of her favorite ways to float back to the gravity of compete consciousness.

"You always know," she broke the silence.

"Ummm? What do I always know?"

"It doesn't matter if I'm cold, or hurting and scared, or just needing to be loved, you always know what it takes to make me feel special…, to feel loved. Thank you."

He nibbled at her neck and said, "It brings me pleasure to see you happy, that's all. I've studied you all these years and I'll get it right, someday."

Amy nuzzled her face into his chest, "You've already gotten it right. This was wonderful, us together like this." she replied, then noticed something was off.

"Ty?"

"Humm?"

"Didn't you…?"

"Umm, humm."

"But, you're still…?"

"Umm, humm. Feeling inspired, I guess."

He felt her smile against his chest, "You think you might wanna…?"

"I thought you would never ask."

To be continued


	68. Chapter 68

CHAPTER 68

Margie put her feet up in the recliner and leaned back into the soft leather in need of some down time after presenting another edition of what she believed a Sunday dinner was meant to be like, spent with all the good food anyone could ever eat and in the company of the ones you love.

Clint was already asleep in his own chair, full as a tick and happy as he could be, she supposed. She had shooed Amy out of the kitchen early knowing that Ty would not be long in following the example of his elder without her if she didn't hurry and get to him first.

The matriarch of the clan McCreary could not help staring at the couple, the handsome young man having dosed off with his head nestled in the beautiful woman's lap and Amy gazing in peaceful bliss, smiling to herself as she mindlessly curled her fingers through his long, straight hair. She appeared to be taking in the panorama of the foothills turning into the Eastern Slope of the Canadian Rockies, framed on the lower half by Margie's prize winning rose garden still in full bloom.

Amy noticed the older woman watching her and tried to divert the uneasy attention, "He needs a haircut, don't you think?"

But Amy was not taking in the mountains. Her attention was instead upon Margie's eight-year-old great granddaughter who had taken it upon herself to begin training the beagle puppy how to do tricks, and Sassy, the white booted feline that had started this whole cycle of intermingled relationships, perched on the sitting bench in the center of the flower garden, her tail twitching back and forth because of feeling neglected, Amy assumed, with the arrival of the family's newest member.

The doting great grandmother noticed where her friend's attention was focused and asked, "Has she asked you to help her with that pup yet? She is determined she will have him shaking hands and rolling over in a day or two," amused by the boundless optimism of the child.

"Yes, of course she has," and chuckled quietly so as not to wake Ty. "I promised I would help her with Barney after we have a chance to rest up from that wonderful meal you made for us. You are such an accomplished chef! The restaurants around Calgary had better be thankful that you didn't decide you wanted to compete with them."

"Thank you. I love to do it and I am so glad you enjoyed it."

The normally upbeat woman took to a more serious tenor, "Amy, I feel like I should take the chance to remind you how much it has meant to all of us to have you here so often these days. You may not realize the way your being here has helped this family heal the loss we have all suffered. Clint tells me about your conversations. He loves to tease you and I must confess, so do I. I hope you don't mind. It just feels good to laugh again and you seem like a good sport about it. It is a joy having a woman around the ranch again, someone to talk to and help out with some of the things that are getting a little more difficult to do for folks at our age."

"I'm glad to help, Margie. You and Clint have been wonderful to me. I am always here if you need me for anything, please know that."

Margie nodded, sentimental and unusually humbled, "And, Amy…, Sammy loves you. I mean that in the truest sense of the word. You have put a lot of the light back in her eyes and if I say so myself, I'm glad to see some of the light come back into _his_ eyes, too," giving a nod to the man lying on the sofa getting some well-deserved rest. "What I am trying to say, Amy, is that you shouldn't feel guilty about how things have turned out or uncomfortable for being here. Charlene did the best she could, but it wasn't meant to be. She's gone on to be with her maker we will have to get on with our lives, best we can. She thought a lot of you, Charlene did, and she honestly believed you would be the only one she could trust to look after all of the people she loved so much after she was gone."

"Thank you, Margie, for saying that. I try not to let the memories of Charlie intimidate me, but I know I can never replace her in anyone's heart, I wouldn't pretend to want to, but this will always be her house and her memories will always be here. In fact, I was just sitting here and watching Sammy, imagining how proud she would be of her daughter right now. She is so beautiful, precious, and full of spirit. How could you not fall in love with that kid?" and wiped away a tear, embarrassed at being so openly emotional in someone else's home.

"Charlene knew how much you loved Ty. She told me once that she also knew, deep down, he still loved you. That is the reason she went as far as she did to try to give you two another shot at getting along, to see where it might go from there."

"I know she did," Amy admitted. "If not for her, Ty and I would never have gotten over ourselves and tried to make things right again. I owe more to her than I could ever repay, and you should know, I told her that before she died, before I even knew that it could really work."

"You're a good person, Amy Fleming. You live with your heart, that's just one of the things that make you so special, and that's why you will always be welcome here, no matter what happens with you two," gesturing again to the sleeping man in her lap.

Amy leaned forward to see if he might be listening to what had turned out to be a more private conversation than it had started to be, _'Dead to this world,'_ she decided, and continued to stroke the longer than usual locks across his temple.

Margie McCrary was not one to hold anything back, "Have the two of you been talking about what's ahead? I see the way you look at him, and the way he looks at you. Don't even need to see it to know, I can hear it in your voices when one of you speaks about the other one. Anybody could tell how much you care for each other."

"We have, but I told him I would wait until it feels right to move on. I don't want to rush him into something he isn't ready for. I hurt him, Margie, very deeply, and no matter what he says, I can still see it in his eyes sometimes when he needs to trust me, but can't. And, losing Charlie affected him more than he lets on. Ty is the most loyal person I have ever met and somehow, I know he believes there should have been something he could have done to save her. It's not true, of course, but something inside him makes him think that way. He takes on so much of life's unfairness as something he could have prevented. I have been trying to make him see that isn't the case, but it's always been very difficult for him to let things go that aren't his fault."

"Know exactly what you mean," Margie said, "Maybe Clint can have a talk to him. He listens to Clint. I am so glad that they have each other. Those two get on so well and they have been good for each other. They've become close and I think they both needed someone like that, someone to trust and confide in. Clint would claim Ty as his own son anywhere, anytime, and if not for the age difference, could get away with it, too!"

* * *

An hour had passed by, talking had turned into napping, and Amy took the opportunity to slip out from under Ty and leave him to his nap, taking the sliding glass door out into Margie's garden.

"OK, Barney…, sit!" Sammy commanded, the pup turning his head sideways as if to ask, _'Why?'_

"Well, Sam, how's it going?" Amy asked.

"It's not!" the dejected child answered.

"I don't see any treats. Didn't you do as I suggested and bring some with you to reward him when he showed signs of progress?"

"Yeah, I brought some, but Barney got into them and ate them up first thing, before we even got started."

Amy bit her lip, something she did a lot lately. The look of disappointment on the child's face, the quite content pup standing in front of them, finally sitting from getting sleepy after eating all those treats, tugged at her heartstrings enough to make her take a few seconds to enjoy the moment. If Norman Rockwell would have seen it, the painting would have been on the front cover of one of her grandmother's Saturday Evening Post's.

"We may as well let Barney take a nap too. I think he's done for the day."

"But we need to at least get him to figure out what sit or lay down means."

"Oh, he knows, alright. Look at him," the would-be coach directing Sammy's attention toward the animal, asleep where he sat, teetering before falling onto the grass, out cold. "Why don't you put him in his pen and maybe we can fire up the side by side and go for a ride down to the river. You know the way, right?"

"Yeah! Awesome!"

* * *

Amy had not yet seen the cabin she had heard so much about, but the view took her breath the instant they broke through the trees and it came into view from the two track trail above the river.

"Oh, Sammy, it's beautiful!"

"I like it down here. Nobody ever comes to bother us when we come here."

The duo parked beside the wooden walkway that offered a choice of going onto the deck beside the cabin or the gazebo and fire pit down by the water's edge.

"Which way?" Amy asked.

"Gazebo!" Sammy yelled, already on the run and half way there.

The two of them sat in the lounge chairs beside the fire pit and talked about this and that, the elder of the two amazed at how eclectic the thought process could be to an eight-year-old.

"Do you think there could be anything in the refrigerator to snack on?" Amy asked.

"Dad keeps vanilla and almond ice cream cones in the freezer, Diet Cokes in the fridge. He says some things, you just can't live without."

The pair found the key hidden on a hook under the roof of the well house and used it to unlock the door. The interior of the cabin was even more impressive than the outside, the massive exposed timbers as huge as any in the hotels she had seen them in, and the smell of wood heightening the senses to relax and enjoy all the features built into it.

"There's a pool table and foosball in the rec room," the younger visitor said. "C'mon!" and was half way up the stairs before Amy could turn around to see where she had gone.

Sammy was a good shot, as Amy had discovered, and it made her feel as inadequate competition for the small hustler with all the shots she had missed.

Thinking she should text Ty and let him know where the two of them had disappeared to, Amy tapped the note onto her phone, 'At the cabin with Sam. Girls day out, but I wish you were here, too!' ㈴1

Ice cream and Diet Coke should never be the first choice for a responsible adult to feed a kid, but this was girl time and no one would ever know. It was the perfect dessert while watching a DVD movie about a horsey girl on a ranch who eventually saved the family farm from foreclosure, a mean investor wanting to cheat them out of the generations old ranch to build a bunch of condos for profit.

* * *

They had been gone for two and a half hours, the movie ending on a happy note and both nodding off from being so relaxed.

"Hey, kiddo," shaking the child awake. "Everybody will be out looking for us soon, if we don't get back to the house."

"I wish we could stay here. I love it down here," she replied, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Me, too! This place is _awesome_!"

* * *

Since Amy had absconded with the kid, the men had gone out to the garage to tinker with some chores Clint had been saving for when his best assistant, next to Sammy, could do some assisting, "Ty, lemme ask you something," the old man slipping the question in between wiping down a nine sixteenth's inch wrench his assistant mechanic had used to tighten up the generator belt on his perfect old Chevy truck and closing the drawer of his spotless toolbox. "Have you thought about moving on with your life, say, with someone like Amy?"

"Sure," the younger mechanic matter-of-factly stated. "I have been thinking about it a lot."

"Do you love her, Ty? Do you care enough to think about what she is going through, too?"

"Of course, I think about it a lot. And…, yeah, I love Amy. I wouldn't want to lose her again, if that's where you are headed with this."

"What do you intend on doing about it, then? It's been more than a year since Charlene passed on, Ty. Nobody wants to rush you, especially Amy, but you should think about being happy again. It'd be good for everyone. Marg and I want to see you happy, and it sure looks like that horse trainer does just that for you. Sammy's crazy about her, too."

"I know, you're right, it's just that once I say something to her, there will be no turning back. We promised each other to be all in, no holding back…, I guess I'm still holding something back."

"Why, Son? What is there to be afraid of? Don't you see the way she looks at you? You know as well as anyone all the trouble she has gone through to take care of you and Sam. She loves you, Ty. Maybe it's time to do some takin' care of her."

The wise old man patted Ty on the shoulder and left him there to ponder his counsel.

' _He's right.'_ The little voice in his head had been saying the same thing for a while already, but the time had come to put one foot in front of the other and take a step toward whatever was to come next. Charlie would be pleased to know her plan was working, that he and Amy had finally found common ground and a mutually fulfilling relationship together despite the odds, and maybe it was time to do something about it because he was sure Charley McCrary would come back from her grave to kick his ass if he screwed things up again.

* * *

Leaving Sammy to her evening chores, Ty chose the long way around the foothills in taking Amy back to Heartland. Without warning, he slowed to turn up the old road that climbed to the ridge, "What are you doing?" she asked. "Not in a hurry to dump me off anymore?" she teased, but had felt him being lost in thoughts unknown to her because he had not offered to elaborate the reason.

"I'm not quite ready to take you home yet. I hope that's OK?"

' _I would go anywhere with you…, knucklehead,'_ she thought, but said, "I would never turn down a drive to the ridge, especially if it happened to be with the best looking guy anywhere in these parts," hoping to lighten the moment.

Ty wheeled the big new truck into the worn down spot where they and a few others knew to offer a fantastic view suited for serious talks or fooling around with someone special.

"Amy, we need to talk," he spoke without the usual hesitation when something heavy was on his mind.

She braced herself for the worst, his tone could mean almost anything. Was he going to tell her they were a mistake, after all?

Ty fumbled in his shirt pocket and blinked when he found what he was looking for. "You have been patient with me. I appreciate the way you have let this thing we have together come naturally and not push me before I was ready, but, the time has come for me to tell you the truth, to say what I am feeling, so you know."

"What do you feel? I thought we were doing well…," fearing this was sounding a lot like a sendoff instead of what she had been hoping for.

Seeing her turn toward being disappointed, Ty took her hands in his, "No, Amy, it's not what you are thinking. In fact, it's just the opposite."

He held up the hand holding the item he had fished out of his pocket, "I have been carrying this around with me for a couple of weeks, still thinking about whether it was the right thing to do…,"

Her eye caught a glimpse of glitter in his hand and she immediately recognized the setting. It was her engagement ring, the one she had so regretfully given back to him on that fateful day, completely taken with the fact that he had chosen to keep it instead of trading it in for money she was sure he could have used to rebuild the mess she had left him in.

Amy's vision was blurred, this time from happiness she could not contain, "You kept it? Ty, YOU KEPT IT?" and threw her arms around his neck, tight grip turning into a weaker sobbing into his shoulder. "I thought…,"

"Well, I thought about it, but I couldn't do it the day I thought I might."

They separated enough to give each other one more look before the next step was taken, their eyes telling all they needed to know.

"Amy, would you still…,"

Her kiss cut short the question, but he didn't mind. This was one of those times, like that first kiss in the barn so long ago when they were just beginning their journey together, that talking was over rated.

To be continued


	69. Chapter 69

CHAPTER 69

Margie rinsed off the last handful of green beans she and Sammy had picked earlier in the morning out of her well-tended garden and sat them on a few paper towels to dry.

"OK sweetie, move over to the table. It'll be easier there."

"Why can't we just throw 'em in a pot and cook 'em now?"

"Not so fast, munchkin. We have something left to do first."

The "Chief cook and bottle washer," as she often referred to herself, took a basket full of their bounty and put it on the kitchen table where the overwhelmed helper awaited her next task. The above average chef was pleased that Sammy had begun to show interest in how the perfect meals that were so common around the 8-S Ranch got to be so perfect and Margie was just as eager to supervise the youngest generation of the McCrary family in how it was done.

"Grab this bean near the stem, like this, and snap of the end."

"Gram, I've done this a million times. Why do we have to do that to every one of them? Can't we just whack 'em off with a knife?"

"Are you saying that we should serve our guests the kind of food they can get in restaurants when they eat out instead of the kind of meal we can make for them?"

"Guess not…, you're a good cook Gram."

Sammy had always known that her Gram had spent a lot of time in the kitchen and had always seemed so happy to do it.

"This is a lot of work, though."

"Anything worth doin' takes a little extra effort, Sweet Pea. It's making it enjoyable to do that's the trick."

"How do you do that? We're just breaking the ends off of beans."

"No, we are not _just_ _breaking ends off of beans,"_ leaning down to the child and mocking her skepticism about being a famous chef someday, "We're spending time together, just you and me, making one of the best meals any of these people are ever going to eat."

The child mulled the pros and cons of their mission, "I want it to be _awesome_ , because it's for Dad and Amy."

"So, you are OK with everything, still excited about the two of them getting married?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I love Dad.., and I love Amy too, it's just that…,"

"You are missing your Mom right now?" wise in her years, understanding all the changes that life can bring whether you are ready for it or not.

Sammy nodded and looked like she might finally break down from carrying a load of emotions too heavy for someone her age, but her Gram always knew what to do and say, "Your mother loved all of us, very much, especially you, and I know in my heart that if she couldn't be here for you and Ty herself that she would be pleased to have Amy looking after us all in her place. She told me, Samantha, before she died, that she hoped your Dad would find someone who loves you like she did and that she thought Amy might be the best one to do that someday. Turns out that your Dad and Amy are getting along great and I am pretty sure you can tell how happy they make each other. Amy loves you, too, Sammy, don't you see that?"

Another nod confirmed the acceptance of her fate, but the changes to her life were big in the eyes of an eight-year-old girl and some of the changes that brought them to this day had left a mark that could never be erased. "But, I miss her, a lot."

Amy stood behind the door and listened to the interaction between her soon to be family and it broke her heart to think the precious child had been forced to suffer the same losses she had been forced to accept as a child as well.

The bride to be stood up straight, collecting herself so as to enter the room in full confidence and as happy as she had been only five minutes earlier.

"Hey, you two. Looks like you are hard at work. Need some help?"

"You can have some of my beans, if you want…," Sammy offering part of her chore.

Part of any given day was making the best of what you are presented with. Amy had learned the hard way to take it upon herself to use an opportunity to make things better than they would have been if she had missed it. Walking around the table, she bent down to hug Margie around the neck, "Thank you…, for everything," a twitch of her brow to let her know it was not just in reference to the preparation of one of her fantastic meals for their occasion, and then moved to Sammy, planting a healing kiss on her forehead and sitting in the chair beside her.

"Show me what you need me to do," and picked up one of the stringy green vegetables as if looking for the proper end.

Sammy laughed, knowing full well that her bean snapping partner was messing with her, and said, _"Really?_ "

An hour in the kitchen together with people you love is medicine to the soul, according to the kitchen boss, and the two assistants kept busy following her lead.

"Amy, don't you have things that you should be looking after? What have you decided to do about the florist not being able to supply the Lavender Orchids you ordered?"

"Orchids were Lou's idea, so it's bothering her much more than me," and chuckled to herself in sentimental retaliation of her sister's compulsive takeover of the affair. "We have so many beautiful flowers already that I don't think anyone would ever notice not having _Orchis Mascula_ anyway," mocking the significance of knowing the formal names of Lou's extensive selections.

Sammy giggled, "What's Orka Muskka…, whatchamacallit? It sounds too creepy to be pretty."

"It's the difference between fifty and two hundred bucks for a handful of flowers," the more practical of the Fleming sisters surmised.

Margie took notice of the bride's demeanor, "You seem remarkably calm considering the wedding is tomorrow."

"I really needed to take a break and get out of the house. Everything is going well in spite of Lou's stressing out. Lisa has been a huge help with all the business owners she knows and getting them to work the wedding into their schedules. She is awesome when it comes to organizing events like this."

"Good to have family so eager to help out when you need them, eh?" the wise matriarch offered, making a point.

Amy put her hands down on the table and looked them both in the eyes, underlining the moment, "Family is everything," and leaned into the youngest assistant, touching her forehead with her own, "You OK? Anything you want to talk about?"

"I'm fine," the girl answered, and then said, "We're gonna be OK."

Amy dropped her green stem and tossed her arms around the child's neck, "Yes, we are," and kissed her cheek with authority, taking a few extra seconds before releasing her embrace.

"Samantha, when's the last time you checked on your animals?"

"I already fed Sassy and Barney this morning."

"How about Petey and the rest of the donkeys, the horses…,?"

Samantha Christine Harris Borden was short in years but long in perception, "Alright, I get it." She slid out of her chair and stopped long enough to kiss Amy's cheek on the way past, "You are gonna be an awesome Mom. Don't worry so much," and walked out the door on her way to catch up with the morning chores.

Watching Sammy all the way past Margie's flower garden, the step mother to be sniffed and asked, "Are you sure that kid isn't eighteen instead of eight?"

Margie rested on her elbows against the table, watching as well, "Samantha is not a normal child. I mean, I may be partial to her, being my only grandchild's only daughter and all, but she's not like other kids her age. She needs someone who thinks like her to keep up with what she is feeling, as she tries to figure things out. She's a deep thinker, a loving soul, and has had to grow up way too fast, like her mom, and much like you, too."

Amy turned toward the wise woman that had become much more than a friend and said, "It's just not fair. A kid like Sammy should be worrying about spending summers playing around the farm taking care of her animals…, learning how to cope with everything she experiences at school, which kids to trust as friends and which ones to steer clear of, getting over having to do homework…, not having her life torn apart and put back together like this."

"We get what we get, Amy. That can be a scary concept in itself, I admit that, but we all must come to understand that, as unpredictable as it is, we have a hand in life's outcome, too. We get bucked to the ground, we get up and get back up on the horse that throwed us…, and then we enjoy the hell out of life when it is going our way."

The phone at Margie's elbow vibrated and she picked it up. Immediately knowing what it was about, she slid a finger across the face to open an ap, "Hello there, Avery, c'mon up. Gate'll open in a second," and pushed the magic button to make it all happen.

"Thanks, Mrs. McCrary."

"Avery Monahan…, good man," she explained the interruption, "He's here from the music store to set up the sound system for the reception area."

"I've known Avery since I was a little kid. Grandma Lindy used to buy her guitar strings from him. Umm, you can see people at your gate?"

"I can see if they missed a hair when they shaved this morning and hear 'em breathing if I turn up the volume," she replied with pleasure in the indulgence. "Can't be too careful these days."

"Humm," a memory popping into the house guest's head. "The day I was here and the guy I worked with in Edmonton showed up at the gate to see me as I was leaving, Clint drove up as we were talking. I was going to ask him about it because he seemed a bit off, like they knew each other and there was some kind of ill wind blowing around them. Do you know what that was all about?"

Keeping her cards close to her chest, "Winton Easton…, yes, we knew him, once," Margie remembered, "Are you asking me if I snooped in on your conversation at the gate? That would be asking me to incriminate myself, wouldn't it?"

"I just thought it was quite a coincidence that Win would show up out of the blue, I mean, to find me all the way up here? Then, no more than five minutes later, Clint comes around the corner in a hurry and stops to check on us. What are the odds?"

"It'd be a longshot, I'll give ya that," answered the older woman, confident with the upper hand.

"Look, Margie, you need to know that I went out with Win to dinner one time, and _one time only_."

"I'm not here to judge you, sweetheart. We have all tripped over a few bumps in the road we might have stepped over if given another chance."

Older folks have a way of looking at things, Amy supposed, and Margie was a good match for her grandfathers animated way of reasoning.

"Liz Pittinger and her family pitched in to give me something to look forward to with that job and I am thankful for them being so good to me. I had been cooped up in the Pittingers' guest house for weeks with little more than dinner at the main house with the family once in a while to break up work and sleeping. I was satisfied with just being alone to think about things most of the time. Liz and I had talked more as time went on. She knew how much losing my career and, most of all, the love of my life…, my best friend, had affected me."

Margie could see the pain in Amy's eyes had not completely healed to this day, probably never would, but also understood that she was a part of the process, to listen, just to be there for her friend, and nodded for her to go as far as she felt necessary to clear the air between them.

"I was sinking and she knew it. Lou knew it, and I knew it, too. I was getting scared, to be honest. I wasn't sure I had what it would take to dig myself out of that dark place if I fell into it again. They both suggested it might be a good idea to get out of the cabin and stop the personal pity party I was wallowing in, but I wondered if I could ever trust a man again after what Ahmed did to me. I felt so vulnerable, being assaulted by someone I knew, and it made me realize I may not always be in control of a given situation if they were to get out of control. I had a choice to make, to learn to how to overcome my weaknesses and protect myself or give up and hide away for the rest of my life. I decided I was in much better physical shape than I used to be and took other precautions to protect myself as well, so one day when Win asked me to go to dinner again, I accepted his offer. Liz assured me that I could trust him well enough because she told me if he put one step out of line that her dad would have his job. I knew if there is one thing in this world that Win Easton loves, it's the money that comes with working for her father. I had been working with him for months, after all. We were almost finished with the job and I needed to get used to the idea that whatever was left of my life shouldn't be consumed by looking into the past. It was supposed to be the next step in getting on with my life again."

"I take it that it didn't go like you hoped it would?" the listener asked.

"The evening was going nicely enough, at first. He took me to a diner in Edmonton where he knew the owner. The food was great, the atmosphere upbeat, and I thought I was worried about nothing until Win began ordering drinks. I don't care to be around drinkers. I never really did because of my dad's problem, but especially not after my experience in Europe. He kept insisting for me to drink with him but I wouldn't go along with it. I finally got upset when he began to get rude about it and asked him to take me home. He did as I asked and nothing else happened between him and me after that. I hadn't seen him since I left Edmonton, not until the day he showed up here. Win Easton wasn't a bump in my road, Margie. He is a big pothole I managed to avoid."

"Not that it would have been any of my business, Amy, but I do believe what you say. The way you told that boy off when he refused to accept your answer was enough to convince me of that."

"So, you _did_ hear."

"Did I say that?" she asked, looking over the top of her glasses.

Amy studied the crafty veteran negotiator. Enough said about that, "I told you _my_ side of what happened, how about you tell me what I _don't_ know."

"Did Charlene tell you about the fellow she took up with after breaking up with Samantha's father?"

"More money than cents..., Yes, Charlie told me about a guy she was with and said he had lied about Sammy's dad cheating with that buckle bunny while he was travelling on the circuit. So, Win Easton...," more of a deflated response to the truth than a question.

"Win was the very one who put the idea into Charlene's head that Brad was cheating on her. That was what set the whole business in motion with Charlene breaking up with Brad and causing their relationship to fail, or taking the last whack at the wedge that split them apart. He had a big part in my granddaughter nearly giving up on life. She almost died back then…, and Brad died without having the chance to get to know his own daughter because of it."

"That's why Clint reacted the way he did…, can't say as I blame him. Why didn't either of you say something to me about it?"

"I know you all think I interfere too much as it is and I figured you handled Win well enough to make be believe you would do the right thing by Samantha and Ty. That's what matters to me. Besides, Charlene told me she would come back from her grave and kick my butt if I didn't give you a chance to prove yourself. She took after her great grandfather in that she could tell the difference by looking at someone if they were selling fine, honed to perfection landscaping product or a load of crap. Amy, you have proven to me and Clint that you are every bit as decent of a person as we hoped you would be. That and much more. Ty and Samantha love you. Clint and I care for you as well. We are happy that you two will be the ones to look after what is left of our family after we are gone. You'll do just fine, I know you will."

 _To be continued_


	70. Chapter 70

CHAPTER 70

(Epilogue)

Amy was certain there could have been no better place to begin their journey as Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Borden. A romantic song played through innumerable time-worn stones as water flowed across the lazy riverbed below the cabin. The allure of the secluded paradise she had discovered while exploring with the little girl who would soon become her daughter had enticed the bride to request her wedding night to be spent there.

Their lovemaking had been gentle, intense, everything in between…, perfect in her idea of perfect. Loving, resting, and loving some more continuing into the wee hours of the morning had taken its toll on their reserve of strength. Amy rolled her cheek into Ty's bare chest as she nuzzled into him, her fingers tracing random patterns across his chest as she listened to the beating of his heart returning to normal. He was exhausted, so was she, but as her husband faded quickly into a satisfied sleep the new bride could not let sleep take her just yet. She knew closing her eyes would draw the curtain on the most perfect day of her life. She couldn't let it slip away, not yet.

Changes had always been difficult for her and she had done a lot of thinking about why that was true. She supposed that most of the big changes in her younger years involved the loss of loved ones or some personal setback that no one would look forward to. Change equated loss. She had lost too much to want more of it, that was the way it had always felt to a young girl trying to figure out why life had been so cruel.

Amy had grown up considerably since then. It was time to balance it all out with changes for the better and today was a huge leap in that direction. She thought about her mother and what it would have meant to have her there during all the decision making and planning for the wedding, having her there to share in the excitement of gaining the son in law she unknowingly handpicked to come into their lives. Her mom would have loved him so much. She and Ty would have gotten along very well, Amy believed.

Everything she had ever thought about being happy was going to take some getting used to. It was finally here, being happy, and it felt strange not having to want for it so much. She had a head start with a family of her own, a loving husband and a beautiful daughter who had a cat, a new puppy, and a barnyard full of animals to watch after. _'How good can life possibly get?'_ she thought.

But it could get better. Clint had asked Ty and Amy to come with him to visit an animal reserve not far away that was in financial trouble. The idea being that since Ty was a vet and she a world class trainer, maybe it would be a good fit for the two of them to consider taking it over and turning it into not only a place to nurture wounded or displaced animals back to health before returning them into the wild, but also to have a clinic for endangered wild horses, to monitor their health and numbers to give decision makers accurate information when the time came to adjust the size of herds in the wild. Charlie's university contacts just happened to be looking for a facility with the potential this eight hundred twenty-six-acre tract of land could provide for their students and with a capable team in place to run it, Clint had sold the idea lock stock and barrel.

It was decided, they were in. It was an opportunity of a lifetime for she and Ty to have the partnership they had always dreamed of, working for a cause that promised to be much more enlightening than the day to day chores a vet's career or farm life would offer. Amy was thrilled beyond words and felt like Charlene would be thrilled as well to have her daughter grow up in her own personal zoo with more animals than any kid ever had.

Together they would soon reopen the new venture as "The Charlene McCrary Nature Reserve," a fitting tribute to a woman who promoted the freedom of wild horses and loved the outdoors with a passion as big as the Alberta sky, and had put them all together to help each other heal and make them strong again.

All there was to do now was to enjoy it, to savor every second and anticipate all the things left to discover about being a wife, a parent, someone who had taken the responsibility of making a house feel like a home. The essentials were in place for a fulfilling life together with the ones she loved and now there would be no more waiting or hoping, it was here.

Amy felt loved to the fullest, her husband brushing tender caresses along her bare skin with his hand, loving even in his sleep. She decided this would be as good a time as any to begin the very first Borden family tradition and kissed her husband on his cheek, "I love you," and put her head down on his chest where it had been. He must have felt it, his hand giving a firmer squeeze on her hip as if to reciprocate and she couldn't help but smile. She would tell him she loved him every night from now on, last thing before she fell asleep, and seal it with a kiss for as long as she lived.

Soaking up his warmth, Amy blinked once, twice, and then faded into the cocoon of nothing but love in his arms. Immediately a presence loomed over her and her mother's kiss fell warm and sweet on her face, her soft voice telling her that she was happy to see that her daughter had fought so hard for what she believed in and gotten it all, answering the questions she had asked her mother once when she was seven years old at having discovered everything seemed to have a price, _'Do dreams really come true, like in the fairy tales? It must take a lot of money to live like that. How much do you think it would cost? What if you can't afford to pay?'_ thinking she should start saving up to buy a dream of her own someday.

She never had quite understood her mother's answer, _"Money doesn't matter at all, Honey. Dreams will be the same price for everyone, rich or poor, young or old. The price of a dream is everything you have, No secrets, no holding back, all in, you and your prince."_

It was exactly as her mother had told her except for one key part, the one that had turned out to be the hardest part to figure out, that a prince may not necessarily come riding up on a shining white thoroughbred to whisk her away from the doldrums of a peasant's life, he just might come riding by in a tired old GMC truck acting like a total jerk thinking it might be funny to get her horse to dump her butt on the side of the road.

 _The End_


End file.
